


Stop! It's Fanon Time.

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Angst, Anxiety, Big Brother Dick Grayson, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Fluff, Future Character Death, Gen, Good Big Brother Jason Todd, Good Uncle Jason Todd, Headcanon, I Made Myself Cry, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Jason Todd is a Good Dad, Meta, Metafiction, Paranoia, Parent Talia al Ghul, Prompt Fill, Sensory Overload, Tim Drake has abandonment issues, Tim Drake is loved, Tumblr Prompt, no proofreading we typo like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-08-28 20:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 22,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: This collection is now the dumping grounds for any longer headcanons that I don't want to lose to the wilds of Tumblr. The first ten come from the Four Headcanons prompt meme (see note), while the rest will drop in as I dig them back up or create them. I'll try not to bore you all too badly.





	1. Dick Grayson

**Author's Note:**

> I took part in the Four Headcanons prompt meme on Tumblr. Other users could send in a character name, and I would have to respond with four headcanons: **realistic** , **humorous** , **angsty** , and **I spit in the eye of canon and walk backward into hell**.
> 
> It was a ton of fun, and since each headcanon turned into a very tiny fic (ficlet? ficling? fikini?), I wanted to keep them safe here in case Tumblr goes belly up. Please remember that these are unedited. Also, I apologize for the angsty ones for each prompt. Oops?

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Dick misses traveling. To him, home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling. It’s something you carry with you, wrapped tight and warm in your chest, tucked behind your heart. He misses being on the road with the circus, every week getting to see a new place, meet new people.

He and Bruce had done some traveling when he was a kid, quick vacations abroad and such, but nothing extensive. When he struck out on his own, he figured he’d do the Nightwing thing for a few years to show Bruce that he could be just as good as Batman, but then he’d transition fully into police work and learn more about life outside a mask. He’d take vacations. He’d travel. He’d see the world.

Somehow, it just never happened.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Dick is a restless sleeper. No, that’s not quite accurate. When he sleeps, he sleeps like the dead—flopped boneless on his stomach, limbs akimbo, oblivious to the world. But sometimes he sleepwalks. And sleeptalks. And, on one memorable occasion, sleepruns and sleepcartwheels.

They’re not completely sure what triggers an episode, but stress is a prime suspect. Bruce and Alfred say he used to be much more active as a child but mostly grew out of it as an adult. Mostly. They all have funny Dick sleep stories. The time Dick marched out onto the back porch on a muggy summer night and had a full, one-sided conversation with a potted plant. The time he came into Bruce’s room, muttering about a bad dream and getting ready for school before crawling into bed with his dad. And Selina. The time he shambled down to the Cave and tried to perform a routine on the rings. (Bruce, thankfully, was still up and stopped him.)

They’ve learned in high-stress periods to put a small alarm on his bedroom door, just enough to warn the house when Dick’s roaming at odd hours. And, of course, there’s a video camera that’s tripped as well. You know, for safety’s sake.

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Dick knows Bruce loves him. He knows it. He knows Bruce would die for him without a second thought. That is an unshakeable truth in Dick’s life.

But he’s also pretty sure he’s not enough for Bruce. He’s not enough to fill the emptiness still festering in Bruce’s heart, an emptiness the rough size and shape of a handful of bullets shot in the dark. He’s not enough to lift the burden of the cowl and set it aside on a plinth, to lead Bruce away from the blood and the violence and the brutality of Gotham. Heck, he wasn’t even enough to lure Bruce out of Gotham for a day. He’d moved to Gotham’s sister city, hoping Bruce would follow, hoping he could get Bruce to chase him with the same determination that Batman chased his foes. Instead, he had been discarded and quickly replaced by another bright-eyed, black-haired boy. And then another. And then another.

They tease him and call him the favorite, but Dick knows the limits of his influence.

Dick loves Bruce. Bruce loves Dick. And it’s not enough.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Dick would never be a police officer. Or if he were, it wouldn’t last more than a hot second. It comes down to logistics. The vigilante business is in his bones now and he can’t shake it free, and a cop’s hours are hard enough without a double life to juggle.

Dick wouldn’t work at Wayne E. He loves Bruce, but it’s important to him to retain his self-sufficiency. Unlike Bruce, Dick isn’t content to do good in the shadows, hidden behind a mask of playful stupidity. He wants to do more, be more.

He tries the private investigator route for a hot second and quickly sours on the sordid divorce cases and petty squabbles. Out of desperation, he drops in to a temp agency to see what they have. They have a job. At the temp agency.

Dick doesn’t stay there long either, but when he leaves, it’s with a purpose. Turns out Dick Grayson is good at connections. Really good.

Need a task done? Dick knows a guy. Need somebody you can trust? Dick’s got a name.

He starts a freelance recruiting service, helping citizens and heroes alike, with a little start-up logistics help from Tim, a few names pushed his way from Jason, and some early business from Wayne E and the Justice League (though only one is public knowledge.)

Slowly, one link at a time, Dick Grayson starts to stitch Gotham back together. Turns out it really is all about who you know.


	2. Jason Todd

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Jason is quick to point out that he doesn’t rely on luxury the way the others seem to. Bruce, Tim, and Damian were born into the upper echelons of society, and while Dick’s origins might have begun humbly, he’s had plenty of time to get used to the finer things in life. Jason, on the other hand, grew up on the darkest, dirtiest streets in all of Gotham and is capable of thriving wherever he’s planted.

However, that does not mean he buys into Bruce’s self-flagellating asceticism. Jason Todd loves simple comforts. He loves soft things. His drawers are full with worn-to-perfection t-shirts, cashmere sweaters, and thick socks. The thread count on his bed is the closest thing he has to approaching Brucian levels of luxury. The Pit sucked the heat out of him, leaving his extremities perpetually frigid and tingling on the edge of numbness, so his spaces are always draped in throws and a space heater sits unobtrusively in the corner. He likes to pick up books at the secondhand shop on the corner. He likes to make himself tea in his own matching tea set. He likes to keep his kitchen drawer stocked with those wafer cookies that are rolled into straws and filled with chocolate. He likes to keep a coaster always on hand.

Jason Todd might not always like himself. In fact, there are many days where he doesn’t like anyone, himself least of all. But he’s learning to love himself, and to be kind to himself. It’s a start.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Jason is notoriously difficult to frighten, unsettle, or gross out. However, he refuses to stay in the room when the movies _Bambi_ or _Jumanji_ (1995) are playing, pimple popping videos make him gag, and he is secretly freaked out by the concept of the ocean. Not of going to the beach or wading in the ocean or anything like that, but the actual concept of a mostly unexplored body of water that covers most of the surface of the planet that could house eldritch beings and other untold horrors. (In retrospect, he may have been a little too young for that _Jaws_ and _Lake Placid_ binge weekend, and Lovecraft was definitely a bad idea.)

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

If you’d asked pre-Ethiopia Dick Grayson about his family, he would’ve said he had a dad, a grandfather, and a little brother.

If you’d asked pre-Ethiopia Jason Todd the same question, he would have said he was an only child.

Dick was Bruce’s son, yes. He was also a hotheaded, arrogant brat of a rich kid who did nothing but disrupt Jason’s life. It wasn’t that Jason didn’t get why Dick was pissed off about the Robin thing. He did. But Dick gave it up. He left, and Bruce offered Jason the mask. That wasn’t Jason’s fault.

And sure, it wasn’t like Dick was mean to Jason. He even tried to be nice, sort of. But Jason hated what Dick did to Bruce. He hated the way the Manor went all frigid and tense when Dick was around. He hated listening to them fight, screaming at each other the way Mom and Willis used to. (It wasn’t the same, but it felt too close.) He hated the way it changed Bruce for days afterward, shutting him down tight and making him impossible to read. He hated how off-kilter it made him feel. He hated how much it hurt Bruce.

When he came back, Red Hood hated Batman because Bruce had forgotten and replaced him. He hated the new Robin for being the replacement, nothing more. But he hated Nightwing for telling lies. They were never brothers.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Jason’s the one who ends up with a bajillion kids, not Dick. Maybe Dick has kids, maybe he doesn’t. Jason’s the one who collects them.

It starts with one kid, some smart-mouth teen punk with too much attitude and too little meat on his bones. Jason would argue that he’s not Jason’s kid. There’s no adoption, no custody even. Just an unspoken promise that if he needs Jason, Jason’ll be there.

A lot of them are like that—no legal agreements, no custody arrangements, just the certainty that at least one person out there has their backs. Jason has a constellation of them scattered all across Gotham. High school seniors on the cusp of adulthood, awkward freshmen with more hormones than sense, coltish middle schoolers with outsized agony and crooked teeth, elementary schoolers with big attitudes and fiery minds, even toddlers with wide eyes and soft lisps.

Some only know him as Hood, but most know to call him Jay. They know which of his pants pockets usually holds candy, how to get ahold of him when they’re in a jam, and to step back and duck away when his eyes glow green, but not to be scared. His anger isn’t aimed at them. Never at them.

He’d die for them, and they’d do the same. The day he realizes that is the scariest moment of Jason’s life.


	3. Cassandra Cain

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Somehow Cass is worse at comforting others than even Bruce. Cass is good at listening, both to the spoken and the unspoken. She’s good at staying calm and retaining a neutral expression. But internally she panics, and as soon as she can escape, she’s gone. Not just out of the room gone, but out of the house gone. Out of GOTHAM gone. Bruce learns he can track the severity of an emotional wound by how far away it drives Cass.

Once the dust settles, she’ll be back with no acknowledgement she was ever gone, except perhaps a little more time spent lingering on the periphery of the injured party’s presence or a few treats mysteriously appearing on a pillow. If the rogues of Gotham ever learn to cry on command, Black Bat is toast.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Everyone at the Manor is delighted to learn that Cass the Favorite may be good at many things, but singing is not one of them. Bruce is happy to catch her singing at all, her imitations of the pop ballads on the radio or the ditties from the latest movies blazing signposts marking her progress with spoken language.

The rest, whether they admit it or not, find Cass’s tone-deaf caterwauling anywhere from gut-busting hilarious to endearing. She never hits the notes right, and it’s always a toss-up whether the words will be correct as well. No one’s sure if she even knows how truly abysmal her singing is, but no one, not even Damian will tell her.  


Not even on patrol. 

Somehow, Black Bat whisper-singing “Under the Sea” while dodging blows comes off as even creepier than anything the Bat himself could devise. The crooks are terrified. The team makes plans to update Cass’s iTunes library. They want to find out what happens if she starts crooning “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman” to Mr. Freeze.

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

A gift, when used correctly, can function both as a defense and an offense. Cass’s preternatural ability to read bodies is a defense. What she reads warns her of what’s coming, helps her decipher the world faster and often more accurately than those who rely on spoken words to resolve meaning. But it is also an offense, letting her pry into secrets and uncover weaknesses.

Cass keeps a mental dossier with plans for everyone she meets. How to defend them. How to end them. For the most part, it’s a harmless thought exercise, one that was drilled into her during her time with Lady Shiva, one that she uses to keep pulse even and racing thoughts still. The plans are her fortress, her backup should the very worst happen. She will never kill, but the escape must always be available, just in case.

No one knows about her mental dossier, except perhaps Bruce. They are too alike. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—know, but he might guess. He knows her like he knows himself, like he knows the safe tucked deep inside the Batcave.

Cass will defend her family with her sweat, with her blood, with her very life. They are under her protection, guarded by her as possessively as Batman guards the streets of Gotham. They are _hers_ , the first people she dared lay claim to. But she is under no illusion that the claim runs both ways.

Bruce is hers, and she is Bruce’s. His daughter. His princess. But one day, Bruce will be gone, truly gone. The others might fall apart or pull closer together than ever, but Cass sees no place for herself in either scenario. She scares them, she knows. She’s too quiet, too foreign, too menacing, too different. They will turn on her, and for the sake of her father, she will run rather than fight, and if they let her flee, all will be well. But if they give chase, if they nip at her heels like hunting dogs, well, she’s prepared for that, too. She knows their weaknesses, and that alone helps her sleep.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Each kid has a favorite Justice League member, whether they admit it or not. Cass’s is J’onn. She sees pieces of herself in him, the unruffled outsider who just wants to do good. She likes that he is unconcerned by her tendency to think in images and impressions rather than words. She likes that there are things he doesn’t understand, even in his near-omniscience.

They’re in no way close, like Clark is with Dick, for example, but they nod in passing. She pays attention when his name is mentioned. Someday, she thinks, that one will make a good ally. Perhaps even a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know Cass nearly as well as the boys, so this one made me as nervous as heck to write.


	4. Wally West & Dick Grayson

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Wally was—and sometimes still is—low-key terrified of Batman. He’s just really hard to read, and Wally’s people-pleasing anxiety is more than ready to fill in the silences with wild speculation. However, some of that terror eased when he really started paying attention to Batman.

All of the makings of the Big Bad Bat were still there—the cowl, the flinty glare, the disapproving grunt, the stoic silence—but now that Wally really looked he saw… well, Dick.

Not that they were in any way alike, but they had some of the same mannerisms and facial expressions. Once, Batman muttered a dismissive jab at Hal under his breath, which would have been a little weird (forgoing the stoic silence and all), but it was the same “whoop-di-dooo” and inflection that Dick used sometimes. Wally almost fell out of his chair. And sometimes when the Titans were being overly rowdy or ridiculous, Dick would turn and give them all this Look that was pure Bat.  
So yeah, Wally still vibrated with nerves around Batman sometimes, but outside of combat situations, it was getting easier to think of the man less as Batman and more as Dick’s dad.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Dick’s favorite Wally story is the time that they stayed up all night playing video games on the floor, only for a red alert to come through right in the peak morning hours. Wally had jumped to his feet to run to the scene, but his leg had gone numb from sitting on the floor. He’d taken one step, then face-planted so hard that he'd run straight through the floor and crashed into the kitchen. (The red alert was later resolved, though the plaster across Flash’s nose had gotten some funny looks. Starfire had patched him up with a Wonder Woman band-aid.)

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Sometimes, it’s hard for Wally to sit still. That’s not news. It’s a feature, not a bug. But sometimes, it’s worse than jittery legs and fumbling fingers. Sometimes it’s his heart rat-a-tat-tatting its way out of his ribcage. Sometimes it’s his brain speeding like it’s trying to turn back time. He can’t stop, can’t slow down, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t focus, and it’s like there’s electricity arcing between his fingers and wires sizzling in his head.

Dick’s good for him, in those times. He’s a stubborn man, strong too, a deliberately dead weight hanging off Wally’s back, forcing him to slow. He lets Wally talk when he needs to, a bottomless well for Wally to shout into at let his thoughts echo back until they become overlapping waves, background noise. He’s a good friend, that Dick Grayson.

Wally wishes he could be a friend like that. Because sometimes Dick gets stuck. Sometimes he takes on the problems of his friends, of his family, of the world around him, and just… sinks. He slows down down down, until he’s waist-deep in sadness and apathy and exhaustion. And no one notices. Not even Wally. Because Wally is energy and Wally is speed, and sometimes he doesn’t even notice that Dick isn’t with him until he’s left him far behind.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Dick and Wally are currently co-parenting a bearded dragon. His name is Enrique. To no one’s surprise, Wally is the Fun Parent, while Dick is more of the disciplinarian. Wally is unsure how he feels about Batman being Enrique’s grandparent, but Bruce did send over the nicest tiny Flash-themed Santa hat for Enrique to wear this Christmas, so perhaps it won’t be so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was reeeeeeeeally tricky for me, because I don't know Wally at all. No one's complained to my face yet, though?


	5. Damian Wayne

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Damian isn’t good at hugging. It makes him uncomfortable, all the variables, all the physical clinginess. He tolerates hugs from the people he values most, because he knows it’s important to them, but only when he’s most upset will he seek out a hug, and even then, the seeking is limited to Dick and maybe Bruce.

Instead, like the animals he loves so much, Damian finds a different way to show his affection. He headbutts. Not forcefully or aggressively like a goat, but gently and with full, needy affection like a cat.

Damian may never tackle Bruce around the waist after a long day of school, but it’s not uncommon now to see Damian responding to a quiet, teasing comment from Bruce by leaning into his father and bumping his forehead against a muscled arm. Maybe it’s weird, but those he loves most understand what he can’t say with his words.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

It’s not the easiest thing to jumpscare Damian. In fact, it’s incredibly difficult as the boy maintains an almost paranoid vigilance. And even once that vigilance starts to fade inside the Manor, no one really wants to scare him and risk getting their nose broken. Or worse.

But the longer Damian is in Gotham, the more he begins to trust in his safety at home, and that’s when the fun begins. It turns out that while lashing out is still Damian’s primary startle reaction, he does have other responses that prove more amusing. Tim’s favorite is when he screams like a soprano surprised in her boudoir. Jason enjoyed the time Damian went boneless and flattened himself on the floor, limbs spread and tense like a spider. Cass still remembers fondly the day Gotham was rocked by a rare and unexpected earthquake and Damian climbed Dick’s spine like a frightened cat and clung to the man’s shoulders, one arm extended to flash a knife menacingly.

They all know that by deliberately targeting him, they open themselves up to reprisals, and a lightning-fast fist to the nose is still their most likely reward, but it’s worth it.

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Sometimes, Damian gets so angry. He feels like there’s acid boiling in his chest, like magma bubbling up, pressing against the thinnest of seals in his throat, like there’s lightning and thunder pounding down the veins in his arms, and if he doesn’t release it, he’s going to blow. He gets so angry his vision wavers, trembling back and forth like he’s been hit, and sometimes it jerks so hard that he feels like he’s watching himself from afar, his consciousness only able to look on while his body reacts.

It’s not a Pit thing. He doesn’t get Pit madness like Jason did, and even if he did, this… this malevolence has been a part of him for as long as he can remember.

He wonders if he’s broken. He wonders if he’s evil. Father doesn’t feel this way. Grayson doesn’t either. Drake and Cain and Brown and Thomas all go about their lives without feeling like they’re going to explode at any moment. Even Todd has the excuse of the Pit and of horrific trauma. Damian’s the only one who can feel the rage crumbling the little bones in his fingers when he struggles not to destroy everything in his path. Damian’s the only one who catches himself planning to hurt anyone who gets in his way. Damian’s the only one who even considers hurting his own family.

He wonders what they would think of him if they knew. He wonders if they would send him back. He wonders if they should. He wonders what it would feel like to see the love and acceptance in their eyes cool into disgust and pity. (Because they were all kind, in their own ways, and they would pity his monstrousness even as it horrified them.)

He wonders if he’s doomed to live like this forever. He wonders if he will become his grandfather one day. He wonders if they should have let him stay safely dead.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

I HEARTILY reject canon reality but maintain that the idea of Tim and Damian becoming #1 bros in their later years is NOT unrealistic, fight me.

Look, they love each other, okay? They may not always LIKE each other, because sibling friction is a thing and there will probably always be a bit of rivalry, but there’s a point when they each accept each other as capital-F Family and another point after that when they realize that the acceptance is mutual.

They grow up. Damian mellows out (a little) and Tim emotionally toughens up (a little) and they both become more secure in who they are as individuals and as members of their strange and wonderful family. And honestly, you can only hear about someone enacting terrible vengeance on your behalf behind your back and without any expectation of acknowledgement so many times without developing a soft spot for that person. (You think that person is Damian? You’re wrong. It’s both. Tim’s vengeance tends to be cold-blooded, but that makes it no less wrathful. The Wayne boys are vicious.)

Lex thought battling Bruce for market supremacy was tough? He now thinks fondly of the days when Bruce Wayne ran WE. Bruce Wayne was brilliant but distracted. Bruce Wayne was a tough competitor but left the day-to-day to Lucius Fox. (Also no slouch, give credit where credit is due.) Bruce Wayne was a walk in the meadow compared to Tim and Damian Wayne. Between Tim’s administrative savvy and R&D expertise and Damian’s leadership skills and head for business, WE is an unstoppable, unkillable monster of an opponent.

To make matters worse, they don’t even seem to care. Money’s nothing to them. They give their employees pay scales and benefits Lex can’t hope to compete with while retaining his profit margin, and they seed most of the rest into the local community. It’s disgusting. Even worse than that, he can’t even split them up because those two brats have somehow formed this unbreakable bond where they won’t believe poisonous rumors about the other scheming for control of the company WHAT IS THIS FAMILY AND WHY ARE THEY THE WORST?! Lex would tear out his hair if he had any left.


	6. Jason Todd, part two

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Jason Todd wears glasses. I will die on this hill. Cylobaby27 started it for me with her fic “This Above All” and I carried on the glorious tradition with my fic “Safe House” and I will fight the entire fandom and canon and the Lord himself over this.

Jason Todd wears glasses. Reading glasses, specifically. He was farsighted as a kid, but his mom didn’t have the money to get his eyes checked. He hid it pretty well when living with Bruce. The migraines probably would have gotten him shuffled off to the optometrist eventually, but he died before that became an issue.

When he came back, his eyesight was fixed along with all of his other bodily complaints, but it wasn’t a permanent fix. In time, his eyesight degraded again, so he broke down and bought a couple pairs of reading glasses. They’re studious-looking frameless lenses. They make him look like Bruce.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

There are times when patrol is less challenging than Jason would like, and a bored Jason is a dangerous Jason. He compensates by setting improv limits for himself, as if he were in a round of Whose Line. This most often means allowing himself to only speak in a certain form of quotation. Sometimes they catch him, sometimes they don’t.

Literary quotes? Whiff, straight over their heads. (Except Bruce. Everyone on that stupid team underestimates Jason and his intelligence, but Bruce remembers his studious little bookworm of a son.) Song titles? It takes the team a little while, but they get there. Disney quotes? They join in. 

The best is when a boring patrol suddenly turns active and Jason carries the game into a fight. No, that’s incorrect. The best is when the rogues catch on and start to banter back in the same theme.

(”Stop!” Dick screams. “In the naaaame of love!” “Can’t touch this!” cries the Riddler as he disappears into a cloud of smoke.)

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Jason _never_ tried to kill Tim. Not once. If he’d wanted Tim dead, Tim would be dead, period. Did he hate the kid when he first came back? Sure. Was the whole homicidal Pit madness thing hard to control at times? Absolutely. 

Honestly, though, at first, Jason just wanted to hurt the kid. He was mad, hurting himself, lashing out. Looking at Tim running around in his old uniform felt too much like a horrific fever dream. He just wanted to see the kid bleed a little, to separate the Replacement from the replaced.

Later, he wanted to see how far Bruce would go to protect the kid. Would he hunt for him? Hurt for him? Pull him off the streets? Would he kill? No. No, of course he wouldn’t.

So Jason’s motivation changed again. He didn’t want the kid dead. He really didn’t. But if little bird kept flapping around the big cats, he was going to get eaten.  
Every threat made, every punch thrown, every potshot taken was a message aimed at Bruce. _I could kill him, but I won’t. But if I don’t, someone else will. Clip your bird’s wings, B. Don’t you ever learn? He’s just a kid._

He didn’t want Tim dead. Some days it felt like he was the only one.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

I adore the fanon surrounding Jason and his many dogs, but honestly, I think my guy goes out and gets himself a cat.

Not on purpose, of course. It’s more like… a cat goes out and gets herself a Jason? Like, he comes home one day from an absolutely disgusting patrol, and there’s a cat on his bed. Just sitting there, prim and proper, in the middle of his bed, staring at him, as if gently scolding him for staying out so late. He thinks it’s a prank and calls up Dick to yell at him. Dick has no clue what he’s talking about. None of the others do either.

He can’t shoo her out. It’s raining that night. And honestly, he’s impressed that somehow this cat found her way into his _heavily secure and fortified_ apartment, so maybe she’s earned one night indoors. He’ll take her to the pound tomorrow.

He collapses on his bed after shucking off his gear and curls up on his unbruised side. The cat pads over to lay next to him, curled warm and soft in the curve of his abdomen. He sleeps better than he has in months.

Of course, before he can even rouse himself the next morning, the rest of the team descends, the charge led by Damian and Dick with their arms full of cat supplies. He insists she’s not staying, that he doesn’t want a cat, doesn’t need a cat, doesn’t have the lifestyle for a cat. They ignore him.

She stays.


	7. Tim Drake

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Tim has a tumultuous relationship with noise. Like Bruce’s relationship with Talia, there is only love or hate with no in-between. His house growing up (not his home, never his home) was always so quiet. If his parents were around, they were sleeping. If they were awake, they were sequestered in separate parts of the house, not talking to him or each other. His house was entombed with silence.

When they were home, he let it lie. He had learned long ago that it wasn’t worth the trouble to get their attention. Best to stay quiet and out of the way. When the silence grew too stifling, he would place headphones over his ears and blast music.

When they were gone, he filled the house with noise—the chatter of the television, the bass-thumping roar of the stereo, the whirr of the mixer and the blender, the sound of his own voice, talking aloud to no one but his own thoughts. He would wrap the cacophony around him like a thick woolen blanket, shielding him from the echoing chill of the empty house.

But that was noise he could control. Accustomed to silence and solitude as he was, Tim has a difficult time dealing with the chaos of the Manor. When it was just he and Bruce and Alfred, it wasn’t too bad. In fact, in those days of brooding, broken Bruce, the heavy silence in the Manor was too familiar for comfort. But now with the Manor full of people, both residents and frequent visitors, Tim can find himself battling for balance.

He needs the silence to think, to _breathe_. On a normal day, the noise is bearable, only just. But there are days when Tim is tired. Stressed. Underfed. Weighted by expectations and responsibilities. And he can’t handle it. Many times, he snaps something sarcastic or frustrated and disappears. No one is particularly concerned. It’s just Tim, perpetually running-on-fumes Tim. He’s fine. But it’s also not uncommon, if one should bother to look, to find Tim squirreled away in one of the dark corners of the Manor, hidden behind layers of doors, or crouching down in the Cave, as far away from the others as he can get.

Once, Bruce found Tim huddled in the shoe alcove of a guest room, a nook inside the closet, inside the bath, inside the bedroom—shielded by door after door after door after door and at the end of a long, seldom used hall. Tim had his eyes closed, his breathing heavy. Bruce didn’t ask. Instead, he sat next to his son in the silence and waited.

The next day, a pair of industrial noise-cancelling headphones appeared on Tim’s bed, along with a note scribbled in a distinctive, hurried scrawl. _Go when you need to. Come back when you can. You were missed._

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Not hilarious, per se, but lighthearted.

Tim paints his nails. Honestly, Stephanie started it. They were slumming around the Manor one night, complaining about school and life and Bruce, and she finished her own nails and started painting his. Tim had officially been awake for far too long and didn’t even notice, not until he finally got some sleep and woke up to find his nails painted a charming pale lavender.

He kept it up, because he liked the aesthetic, because he liked keeping his hands busy, because he liked being purposely different from the others, rather than different in all the ways he couldn’t control and couldn’t change.

He’s not particularly good at it, even with lots of practice. He still makes a mess and floods his cuticles and touches the polish too early when it’s almost dry but still smudgeable. But he likes it. And he blushes only a little when Cass—and sometimes Dick and, once, Jason—asks him to do theirs.

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

The first time Dick saw Tim cry was Tim’s first birthday after becoming Robin. Tim had been sporting the domino for a few months now and doing a bang-up job, Dick had to admit. They were still more tentative acquaintances than friends, what with Dick living in Bludhaven and Tim’s natural shyness, but Dick was determined to form a bond. He appreciated what Tim meant to Bruce, the role he was playing in both their lives, and he understood what a special kid Tim was. More importantly, Dick was determined not to make the same mistakes he had with Jason.

It had taken surprisingly little arm-twisting to get Bruce to agree to a tiny party for Tim’s birthday. Maybe it helped that the crowd truly is tiny—just Bruce, Dick, Alfred, Babs, and Tim’s friend Stephanie. Maybe it helped that Bruce was also thinking of past mistakes. Making it a surprise party had also been Dick’s idea. Who didn’t love a surprise party? They didn’t even need to invite Tim over. He always came by after school to run through case files with Bruce. They could just wait in the dining room and surprise him when he walked in. (Well, Dick, Alfred, Babs, and Steph could. Bruce could look on impassively.)

It might have been okay if Alfred hadn’t been doing some deep-cleaning in the parlor that day. Or maybe not. Maybe Tim would have always jumped to the wrong conclusions. Maybe the eerie silence in the Manor would have been enough, but the dust covers over the furniture, the pulled drapes, and the silver boxed for cleaning certainly hadn’t helped.

Tim called Bruce’s name as he walked through the Manor, his voice becoming more uncertain with each step. When he walked into the dining room and they shouted “Surprise!”, Dick had expected a jump, maybe a little scream, maybe some embarrassed laughter. He hadn’t expected Tim to burst into tears. Hadn’t expected the tears to continue, for Tim to sob so hard that he bent over, then knelt with one hand braced on the floor, the back of his other hand pressed to his mouth as he desperately tried to stop.

Alfred had taken firm control, ushering Dick, Babs, and Steph out the far end of the dining room as Bruce hurried to the boy. As the doors swung shut, Dick had caught the gasping, hiccuping explanation.

“I thought you’d left. I thought you’d left me.”

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Tim didn’t know Bruce was alive. He didn’t have a feeling. He didn’t have a clue. He just couldn’t face the idea of losing the one person who meant more to him than anyone else. Even before Bruce was Bruce, he was Batman. He was consistency. He was safety. Tim couldn’t face a world without that. So he kept pushing until reality bent to his will. Bruce Wayne, alive, pulled back by Tim. 

(Tim so rarely sets his mind on things, rather than bending to the weight of what is and must be. Given the power of his results, that’s probably for the best.)


	8. Clark Kent

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Clark didn’t have to learn Kryptonian. One of his father’s files uploaded the intricacies of the alien tongue straight to his brain, building off the foundational knowledge buried deep in his long-lost infant connections. He doesn’t have memories of his mother crooning to him in that tongue, nothing beyond watching the encrypted recordings his father sent. He doesn’t remember singing songs or making jokes or even calling his parents by the Kryptonian versions of mom and dad. But it’s still a part of him, of who he is. He’s painfully aware of his role as the last of his kind, the last being in the whole of the vast, unending universe to carry these words in his mind and heart.

Is it any wonder that he nearly falls from the sky in surprise the first time Bruce addresses him in Kryptonian? The gambit worked, getting his attention in the heat of battle the way nothing else could, but he’s left reeling.

Turns out Bruce hadn’t wanted access to the Fortress solely for research. Turns out Bruce has quite a knack with languages, even unearthly ones. Turns out Bruce sounds kind of adorable when he’s hesitantly picking his way through unfamiliar verb conjugations. Turns out Bruce is more emotionally perceptive than people give him credit for. Turns out Bruce knows what it feels like to be the last. Turns out when Bruce sees something he can fix, nothing in heaven or on earth can make him yield. Turns out that in all of humanity, Clark couldn’t have chosen a better best friend.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

It’s a day that lives in League legend. No one dare mention it in casual conversation. It is whispered about, spoken about in hushed tones by only the bravest, and only when they are completely alone. They are never alone. The shadows are always listening, but they must speak of it, the day of myth, the day of the unspeakable.

They had come back from a grinding battle that had stretched for days. Everyone was exhausted and injuries abounded. Most planned to limp to medbay or to their rooms to sleep for the next three days. Bruce had headed straight for the computer banks.

Not only had Bruce taken hits that would have felled a lesser man, but he had gone into the fight with a virus one of the kids had brought home from school. His face was pale, his forehead dotted with sweat. He had one arm tucked against his chest, clearly broken in some way, but he wouldn’t let anyone near. Flash had been the first to notice Bruce missing and had tracked him back to the archives. Showing unusual wisdom, Flash had retreated and gone to find Clark.

In the meantime, others had noticed Bruce’s stupid lack of self-care and attempted to reason with him. A dumb move when Bruce was in the best of moods. Clark had arrived, still stained and sweaty from battle, to find Bruce hunkered over in his chair, snarling and hissing threats at the team members that surrounded him.

Rather than attempt to reason with his friend, Clark had pushed his way through the other heroes. They watched with unabashed awe as Superman reached out and lifted Bruce by the scruff of his neck as if he were no more than a mewling kitten before carrying him from the room.

Bruce and Clark reappeared three days later, both clean and well-rested, Bruce with his cuts plastered and his wrist splinted. No one spoke of what Clark had done, what Bruce had been forced to let him do. But they whispered it to each other and made sure the story lived on. (No one told the kids. No one DARED tell the kids. Bruce might have a no-killing policy, but Batman could do worse than kill you _with his glare alone_. No one wanted to know what would happen if he were properly motivated.)

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Clark is secretly glad for Bruce’s many contingency plans for the League. He wishes his friend’s life didn’t warrant that level of paranoia and hyper-preparedness, but he’s glad for that safe, for that case, for that glowing chunk of kryptonite.

It keeps him up at night sometimes, the gnawing worry over what he might become someday, once everyone he loves is dead. He doesn’t know what the lifespan for a Kryptonian is, doesn’t know how the warm, yellow sun might affect that. His childhood growth pattern was fairly standard in terms of pace, if not size. But now he’s started to notice differences, slight, almost imperceptible, but present. How the years don’t seem to touch his face. How his hair stays full and dark even as silver streaks weave their way into Bruce’s locks, into Lois’s. His face stays full and smooth as fine wrinkles crease the corners of Hal’s mouth, Barry’s eyes.

His parents grow older by the day. The children, the young Titans that he’s guarded and shepherded, are grown and creating children of their own. Jimmy keeps his boyish twinkle even while gaining a man’s paunch around his middle. Perry counts the days to retirement and fishing and Graceland tours. Heroes retire or die and new ones take their place.

And Clark remains.

One day, they’ll all be dead. Some at the hands of evil or disaster, but more by the ravages of old age. Bruce, dead and buried, for real this time. All his kids, gone. Perhaps even their kids, gone. Jon, with his mix of genetics, might linger longer, but soon he’ll be gone as well. And what about Kon? Clark knows he’s capable of stretching his life beyond the bounds of human limitations, but what about Kon? Kon, Clark’s identical in genetics, his near opposite in everything else. Reckless, undisciplined, beloved. Genetics can only take you so far in battle, even under a young and blazing sun.

Diana will last, the demi-goddess eternal, and that will be a comfort for a time. They will cling to each other as the others crumble away, but for how long? How long until the bright and unblemished warrior tires of the tainted world of men? How long until she changes the unchangeable and is welcomed back by her people, shepherded into an untouchable world of peace?

And then he’ll be alone. Unageing. Unchanging. Wearied and bitter but still decades or even centuries from the end. What will become of him then?  
He’s glad to know there’s an escape. He’s glad Bruce has thought to give him that, to give the world that. There will always be heroes in the universe. One day, he fears he won’t be one of them. But long past the end of the Bat, the plans of the Bat will endure. The knowledge will endure. The end will endure. And Clark is glad.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

Clark was the only other person who knew Dick wasn’t dead. It wasn’t that Bruce couldn’t keep the secret. He could, and did, from his entire family. From his grieving, self-destructing children. From Alfred, even. But he told Clark, explaining in terse, brittle words about the opportunity, the plan, the expected outcome.

Clark had wept when he heard of Dick’s death. He had wept for his friend Bruce, for his imagined pain and for the fear of what this new loss would do to him. He had wept for his friend Dick, that little boy who called him Uncle Clark and liked to hang gleefully from his neck, that grown man who sometimes still did the same, just for the joy of it.

Finding out it had all been a farce… Clark had listened to Bruce’s explanation—that pathetic, stilted thing, held stiff with unspoken excuses and reeking of prideful disregard—and walked out of the room. It was either that or throw a punch, a real punch, at Bruce Wayne, and Clark didn’t think Dick would appreciate it if Superman killed his father, even on his behalf.

Clark didn’t talk to Bruce for months afterward. The rest of the League noticed, baffled and alarmed that Superman would withdraw support from his friend in Batman’s time of grief and need. Clark stood firm and continued to avoid Bruce until Dick was home and safe and Bruce needed Clark’s support once more as the family found out what had happened and everything went to hell.

During those months of silence, Clark spoke to Bruce for only two reasons. They spoke in the field, when giving orders and coordinating for the sake of the world trumped personal disagreements. And, when Bruce asked, Clark assured him that Dick was still alive, that he was well, that he was holding steady. It was only Clark’s super-hearing, his ability to keep tabs on Bruce’s eldest, that had granted him access to the conspiracy. And Clark might hate Bruce for that, but he wouldn’t fail Dick. If there was trouble, true trouble, they would be there.


	9. Tim Drake, part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My popular boy. <3 I combined Headcanon C and D for this one, because I wrote it for D but choked myself up.

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Tim was not a great student in school. In fact, he was abysmally bad, except for the times when he was passably mediocre. He had started out promising, a bright young kid with a sharp mind and an eagerness to learn. Then he’d realized his parents didn’t care a bit about his grades, no matter how many glowing report cards he brought home. Around the same time, he’d started following Batman. Apathy combined with reckless sleep patterns tanked his grades, which never recovered.

Even after his parents died and Bruce took him in, Tim was only ever an average student. Bruce required him to pass his classes, so he did and nothing more. It was a surprise to no one but Bruce when Tim dropped out without finishing high school. It was a surprise to no one but Bruce when Tim started digging into the inner workings of WE and excelled. Like the proverbial horse, Tim cannot be made to focus on anything that doesn’t interest him. However, give him a task that catches his attention, and he will hyper-fixate with an unparalleled zeal.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

The family has an entire group chat album devoted to photos of each other caught sleeping in unusual places. Everyone makes an appearance at least once. That’s just how their lives are. But currently Dick and Tim are in the lead for most appearances. Especially Tim. Dick at least has the common sense to head to Bludhaven every now and then.

Top favorite entries include: Tim asleep, fully clothed, on the floor of Bruce’s all-glass shower. Tim asleep on Dick’s pommel horse in the Cave. Tim asleep, crammed like a sardine into the storage space under the backseat of the Batmobile. Tim asleep on a tilt-a-whirl, _while the ride is in motion_. And, of course, the perennial favorite, Tim asleep on a ladder in an apple orchard while Jason and Damian pose beneath him.

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

(combined with!)

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

When Bruce reaches his twilight years, Tim is the one who moves home again. Someone has to. Alfred has long since passed, bless his soul. Damian still lives at the Manor, but as Batman, he doesn’t have the ability to stay home like Bruce needs. Dick and Jason both would have stepped up, happily despite their faux-complaints, but they both have lives. Families. Careers. Roots.

Tim has friends, even dates, but his life is and always has been tied to Bruce Wayne’s. He still lends tech support and backup in the Cave, filling in for when Babs is to busy or just unwilling. (She’s a mom and a career woman. She’s allowed to decline. In fact, Bruce encouraged it, happy to see them all stretch beyond the domino.) Tim even provides backup in the field from time to time, though Damian has his own crop of allies and partners that watch his back. And he’s still controls a large portion of WE, working side by side with his little brother.

So it’s easy for him to box up his things, sublet his apartment, and move back to the Manor. Bruce, still as stubborn and independence-hungry as ever, frets that he’s taking Tim away from his life.

Tim just laughs.

Now that Bruce is sidelined, his body broken by years of abuse, his clever mind fading under decades of damage, he spends his days quietly, watching television, completing crossword puzzles, napping in the sun. It makes Tim sad to look at him sometimes, a lump in his throat rising as he imagines the end that could come tomorrow or not for another decade. But this life, now, as it is, isn’t so bad.

This is the life Tim always wanted. Long, quiet talks with Bruce. Movie nights with Bruce. Inside jokes with Bruce. Strolls in the garden with Bruce. Reminiscing with Bruce. With their family, there’s always excitement, always action, always drama, always heartache. But, for once, Tim has a steady pocket of serenity with his dad.

Truth be told, he never really stopped being Robin, and Bruce will always be his Batman. He’s glad to be home.


	10. Alfred Pennyworth

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Alfred is a card shark. He might look genteel and proper (and he is, no denying), but that man can clean out a poker table faster than you can blink. He gets together monthly with Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon, and several old boys from around the city. (Bruce isn’t the only one with contacts.) They play cards, complain about bodily ailments, and brag on their kids.

They cheat. He doesn’t. He doesn’t have to.

* * *

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Alfred, despite suspicions to the contrary, is a mortal man, and when the Waynes were brutally murdered, he was still a young man at that. A young man who hadn’t fully resigned himself to his role as the sole legal guardian to a grieving boy. A young man who was, it must be said, considered handsome and charming by women his own age.

Of all the horrors Bruce has been subjected to in his long, eccentric life, none have horrified quite so much as that one night, at the age of eleven, when he walked in on Alfred and a lady friend long after they thought he had gone to bed. (He had. He’d had a nightmare and wanted it gone. WELL, PROBLEM SOLVED.)

Alfred never had another lady friend visit the Manor, just to be safe. (Bruce tries not to think too hard on Alfred’s “bingo afternoons.” Of course it’s just bingo. It must be. _He will not think about it._ )

* * *

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Alfred is the first to admit that his place within the Wayne household is unorthodox. He is “just” the butler, but also its keeper. With the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, he is its caretaker and Bruce’s legal guardian. But he is not Bruce’s father. That distinction is important to him, the assurance that he’s not trying to take the place of Thomas Wayne even while he does the dead man’s job in raising his son. It is, perhaps, rooted just a bit in the unspoken fear that this is one job that he’s destined to fail at.

So Alfred does his best, all while knowing that it won’t be enough. He calls Bruce “Master Bruce” and never just “Bruce.” He tends to bloody lips and fevered forehead and eyes swollen red from crying. He watches helplessly, stoically, as Bruce leaves for parts unknown. He waits, tending to a house that isn’t his to await the return of a son that he cannot claim.

Bruce returns and is changed, and Alfred welcomes him. Bruce returns and has a mission, and Alfred cannot say no. It is not his place to say no, not to this boy who is now a man. So he doesn’t. He tries to talk sense, he tries to guide and direct, but he is not family. He’s merely support staff. So he supports. He supports Batman and the whole ridiculous endeavor. He supports (in public; in private, there are long discussions) the acquisition of a wide-eyed circus orphan and, later, the arrival of an orphan with a foul mouth and malnourished limbs.

He doesn’t know who he is in this household. He is Alfred, the butler. But is it the butler’s place to stitch wounds and set bones? Is it the butler’s place to man communications and provide alibis? Is it the butler’s place to weep silently over the fresh grave of a child that is not his own?

They call him Alfred or Alf or Pennyworth. Just the butler. Just the staff. But he’s the one who welcomes them home, lost boys and girls looking for a place to belong. He’s the one they go to with their secrets. He’s the one they allow to ease the pain in their limbs and the aches in their hearts. He’s the one they trust to know their safe houses and burner numbers and secret stashes. And they may call to their father in the night, when the terrors climb the drapes and peel back their eyelids, but it is Alfred who makes the camomile their father brings to their bedsides. And it is Alfred who sits by their father’s side and comforts him when the burden of his calling grows too heavy.

He lives a good, long life, long enough to see Bruce’s children grow and have children of their own. Some are blood-related and some are not, but the difference doesn’t matter. It never has. He meets them, loves them, and tends to them as he always has, even as they learn to tend to him. He gets to watch his Bruce rock little babies and kiss bloodied knees. He gets to fall asleep in a rocker with the sweet weight of a dozing toddler on his chest and the warmth of a crocheted afghan on his knees. He gets to meet his namesakes, these precious little souls with their big eyes and soft, downy hair.

They’re all there with him at the end, this massive, wild, wonderful group of people he has spent his life protecting. Spent his life loving. And when he goes, they both mourn and celebrate him as they could no one else, because there is no one else like him.

Because he is their butler.

Because he is their father and grandfather.

Because he is their friend.

Because he is Alfred.

* * *

**Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.**

In my head, when Bruce first decides to become Batman, he finds the Cave already partially prepped. It’s still very much an actual cave with none of the supports or improvements, but there are crates of supplies already down there, as well as boxing and weight equipment, a crash pad, and some computer equipment. When he asks, Alfred tells him that his father, Thomas Wayne, had considered building the Cave out into a panic room before his death.

That is a lie. Alfred was MI6 before joining the Wayne household (CANON) and commandeered the space for himself from the very beginning. The Waynes knew. After all, they had hired Alfred Pennyworth for more than his impeccable grasp of etiquette and unflappable poise. After their deaths, Alfred’s unspoken duty became of supreme importance.

Bruce, bless him, can be laughably blind to the things he doesn’t want to see, so he never suspects a thing. Dick is much like his dad in that way. Jason starts to suspect something after Alfred finds him bleeding out in an alley and deadlifts him onto his back without breaking a sweat. And Cass <>knows. Bless that girl, she’s far too stealthy for her own good.

Alfred Pennyworth Is Ripped As Heck 2K19


	11. Jason and zombies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/181632511142/lets-try-this-again-d-jason-wa-zombie-emoji

I think Jason’s relationship with depicting of zombies depends on his current relationship with himself. When he was a kid, he didn’t mind them. They weren’t scary or unsettling, partially because zombies hadn’t really hit a cultural zeitgeist outside of _Scooby-Doo_ , where they were slow and dumb and silly. It wasn’t until later, when Jason was older, that frightening, fast, intelligent zombies began popping up and taking over the pop culture landscape. Unfortunately for Jason.

When Jason was still wrestling with his own death and resurrection, he hated zombies. He saw not enough and too much of himself in them. They were ugly and feral and disgusting, things he didn’t recognize. He didn’t have sloughing skin and glassy eyes. He didn’t crave brains. But he did have a hunger he couldn’t fill. He did look into the mirror and jolt at the dead eyes staring back. He did feel himself hovering in that undefined, unsettled, but brutally visceral place between true life and true death. He knew what it was like to claw your way into a world you didn’t understand.

That said, I think Jason makes his peace with the undead. He never likes them the way Tim does. He can’t sit down and truly enjoy an undead romp of a film, but neither do they repel him the way they used to.

Still, it comes as a surprise the day the flash mob hits the quad of Gotham U. Flash mobs are rarer in Gotham, since the city has enough dangers that surprises involving large crowds tends not to go over well. There are more precautions taken, as well as regulations to mind regarding masks, clown makeup, and the like. But Gotham was always big on Halloween, and its citizens loved a good meme as much as the rest of the country.

Hence the Thriller flash mob on October 30th in the middle of campus.

Tim had quit school by then, so he’d missed the entire event. He heard about it later, though, and pulled up the YouTube link. It had been a good-sized group of about fifty people, all college students by the look of them, though it was hard to tell with the zombie makeup. Their costumes ranged in style and cost, with most choosing to honor the aesthetic of the old music video, all the better to highlight the young man in Michael’s role and iconic red jacket.

The choreography had been surprisingly in sync for moves performed by a group of unconnected strangers. Tim had been so into the joy of the performance that he had nearly missed the dancer just behind and to the left of the main performer. The man wasn’t outstandingly good, not memorable in terms of makeup or costume or talent. The only thing at all out of the norm was the streak of white caught in his forelock.

Tim leaned forward in his chair and quickly skipped the recording back. Then he watched it again. Then he yelled for Dick. Who called for Bruce. Who called for Alfred while staring unblinkingly at the blurry but clearly grinning face of his secondborn. The link hit the family group chat within the next one point three seconds (courtesy of Tim), to Jason’s horror and private satisfaction.

 **Edited to add:** I just realized that once the clip starts gaining traction on the internet, sturdy boy Jason is _absolutely_ dubbed Left Beef by the netizens.


	12. Damian and a raised eyebrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/181626699927/i-think-i-might-be-the-damian-anon-i-sent-an

Damian adores Dick Grayson. He trusts him like no one else he knows. He _loves_  him a little more than everyone else.

However, Damian Wayne is still a little boy who desperately hungers for the attention, approval, and affection of his father. He was raised to view Bruce as a hero’s myth, a pantheon of justice and strength. Given the unattainably high standards of the League, I’m sure he viewed his absent father as a potential haven. And then he finally makes it to Gotham and Bruce is in many ways even harder to please than Talia and Ra’s, because all they cared about was results. Bruce cared about the ways those results were achieved and valued things Damian had been taught to consider worthless.

It was a hard road for the three of them, both when Damian first arrived and none of them had any clue how to make their changed family work, and again when Bruce returned from the “dead” and upset the functional equilibrium Dick and Damian had constructed in his absence.

In the end, Dick was able to transition back into the role of beloved older brother and role model, with Bruce returning to the role of father to them both. Damian still idolizes his brother, often deferring to him over their father in emotional issues, since Dick has spent the time building that foundation for his little brother. And Damian often imitates him in the way that little brothers do—choosing the same haircut, rooting for the same teams, parroting the same opinions.

But Bruce is Damian’s father, and once they reach their accord, the others notice Damian mimicking his sire more and more. Damian is never more pleased than when told how much he looks like his dad, and has been caught more than once posing in front of a mirror, hands gripping his lapels, one eyebrow raised in a trademark Bruce Wayne look.

Bruce, for his part, was secretly worried that Damian had inherited all the worst parts of him—his stubbornness, his rage, his emotional coldness—but grew to appreciate the full, beautiful human being his son is. He hopes for Damian, as he does all his children, that Damian will someday be able to leave the vigilante life behind him and make his mark on the world in a broader, safer way. But if that does not happen, if the world still requires a Batman, he thinks they can do none better than a stubborn, caring man with his father’s motivation and his brother’s heart.


	13. Bruce and cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Question: Does Bruce Wayne know how to cook? 
> 
> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/180732704672/does-bruce-know-how-to-cook

Oh my friend, _cook_  is such a vast word. Does Bruce Wayne know how to cook? Our brilliant man was the top student in AP Chemistry, and what is cooking but a complicated sequence of chemical reactions? He knows how to titrate, how to work stoichiometric conversions, how to monitor intricate and complex experiments with ease.

Stranded in the wilderness? Caught on a mountainside? Lost in the desert? No one better to have with you than Bruce Wayne. That man can catch, kill, skin, and roast a critter up with a no-nonsense level of skill that brings to mind both Ron Swanson and Gordon Ramsey, and what can be a more essential form of cooking than heating meat over an open flame?

But whatever you do, do not let that man into Alfred’s kitchen. Or any kitchen. Cooking is a scientific art, somewhat reliant on dependable reactions, but more heavily weighted toward gut measurements—a pinch, a sprinkle, a dash—and is an ancient tradition that relies heavily on presupposed common knowledge. Bruce Wayne can handle none of these things. Bruce Wayne has ruined instant pudding mix. Bruce Wayne once nearly burned down his house while boiling water. Bruce Wayne can’t even microwave popcorn effectively.

Bruce Wayne is a disaster in the kitchen and can make one (1) thing well, and that is an absolutely banging’ grilled cheese sandwich. Which must be cooked in the offshoot kitchen, because Alfred Will Not let him in the main kitchen, and of course the Manor has more than one.

No, Bruce Wayne cannot cook, and don’t you let that rich, lying prettyboy tell you otherwise.


	14. Damian and vegetarianism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Question: Do you have any headcannons about Damian Wayne being a vegetarian? I’ve noticed some bar books don’t really acknowledge it. If not all good 😊
> 
> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/180668353647/do-you-have-any-headcannons-about-damian-wayne

Not _specifically_ , but I’ve read so many fics where he’s definitively, 100% vegetarian that my brain has accepted it as True Facts. To the point that sometimes I forget and write him eating meat in a fic, and then I get grumpy with myself and go back to fix it—not out of any obligation to what ~feels~ right in my own head, but in the same way I would be grumpy if I wrote Bruce’s eyes as brown instead of blue, you know?

THAT SAID, I do like the concept of Damian as a staunch vegetarian because of what it says about him. Like, this child was raised by _assassins_. He was trained to never, ever, ever show weakness or mercy. And he still might not like people all the time, but he is willing to dig in his heels and refuse to contribute to the harm of an animal. Refuse! This boy! Who knows that _**very bad things**_  can happen when he directly contradicts people in authority over him. And he has no way of knowing at first that Bruce and Alfred won’t treat him the same way that his mother and grandfather do. But he says no anyways!

My little nugget of a boy. He’s so prickly and bratty and arrogant, but he’s just a kid, and one with a soft heart at that. He _means_  to do right and good. He just needs help getting there sometimes.


	15. My worst BatFam headcanon of all time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have been warned. This is possibly the worst BatFam headcanon I could possibly create.
> 
> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/178229314228/share-your-headcanon-burn-us-to-ashes

was thinking about Jason’s resurrection and how it was never really explained. I still don’t have an explanation, but I started wondering if he was the only one this had happened to. So the symptoms that I know are that he was **like a zombie—confused, disoriented, easily frightened, pale, disheveled**. Right? And supposedly the Lazarus Pit is what brought out his unhinged rage.

I don’t think that’s the case because **Damian didn’t have those symptoms** , at least not that I’ve seen. (And apparently Cass used the Pit as well? And I’ve never seen her shown as displaying a Jason-level rage.) You have to remember that my comics background is very light, but also the comics are a mess, I stick to the narrow band of consistent characteristics, fight me.

So, returning to Jason’s so-called Pit madness,  **what if the Pit wasn’t the cause of the rage**? 

What if the ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE LEVELS OF STRESS caused by being violently murdered, stitched back together, and then having to DIG YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR OWN COFFIN ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT YOUR FAMILY REPLACED YOU were the true origin of his issues? 

And **all the Pit was responsible for was making him lucid** enough to express that fairly quickly and also erasing his physical injuries?

If you accept this premise, then you get something very interesting. What if ~someone~ died in a similarly awful fashion and was raised by this unknown power, but **did NOT have the baptism by Pit**? What would you have then?

You would have a **confused, disoriented** person still bearing the **scars** of their death and whatever **psychological trauma** that was a part of them when they died compounded by likely also digging themselves out of their own grave. Their **trauma would likely be amplified** by the time it would take to piece back together what little was left of their mind after being resurrected. 

Now assume this person had **no Talia** to direct their rage. Oh and the **pale-as-death skin**. Don’t forget that. You could even, feasibly, add in a small backstory about this person being taught as a child to **laugh at their fears**. 

So you have a **psychologically unhinged** , **physically damage** d person with **death-madness** , **no fixed point** for their rage, unerased **scars** from whatever killed them, **unnaturally pale skin** , and **terror** out the wazoo because haiiiii murdered and resurrected six feet underground, and then they remember to **laugh at their fears**. 

##  What do you get?

 

 

“Oh Lurker, I loathe you, but you said you had a horrible BatFam headcanon. The Pennywise wannabe isn’t part of the Fam.”

You are correct, he is not. But it gets worse.

Take all of the above—the **evidence for the Joker as a resurrection victim** like Jason, the idea that **he might have had a somewhat different path** if he’d had people to step in his way early on (Talia, Bruce, Dick, the Outlaws, etc.)

Then add in DC’s willingness to muck about with **time travel** and **alternate timelines**. 

And Joker’s penchant for the only person to call him Mistah J. Or **Mistah Jay** , if you like. 

Lastly, I would also like to point out that the Joker from Prime Earth is listed as having **grey eyes**. A color that could also be called a **desaturated blue**. You know. If you wanted to.

And there you go. My worst BatFam headcanon of all time.


	16. Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Question: Who do you think has the best voice in batfam? How do they all sound like? Who has the best soprano voice and who has the jazzy baritone? Who has the customer service voice nailed? Spare voice headcanons please?
> 
> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/182507289882/who-do-you-think-has-the-best-voice-in-batfam-how

I will tell you that when I first started reading BatFam fic, post-Pit Jason Todd sounded like the voice the narrator of _The Raven Boys_  used on the audiobook for Ronan Lynch, just minus the accent. Now that I’ve seen _Under the Red Hood,_ it’s a mix of that voice and Jensen’s. It sounds like metal being dragged across gravel. He can also do the Trailer Voiceover Guy voice pretty well, to the delight of his siblings.

I’ve been pretty open about my headcanon that Cass is a horrifically bad singer. However, she probably has a high, clear, bubbly laugh.

Dick, on the other hand, is probably a pretty good singer. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s serenaded Babs a time or two. He’s also likely the only one of the kids with the interest in singing well where others can hear _and_  the most likely to tempt the others into a car trip singalong.

Damian is still a kid and therefore much squeakier than he is aware of, especially when irritated.

Tim is short and skinny and therefore doesn’t have a terribly deep voice. It likely gets higher when he’s excited about a particular topic. However, he is not a talker when groggy and has been known to conduct entire conversations by grunt alone, and those can get pretty deep.

Bruce is a shy singer. He might break out a line or two while Brucie-ing it up for a social interview (probably something classy and jaunty like Sinatra), but that really is just Brucie, so that’s different. Real Bruce sings low and quiet in a way that makes his chest hum, usually while scraping back the sweaty hair of a kid still reeling from a nightmare. It’s probably a good voice—maybe even a great voice, objectively speaking—but no one can say for sure. The only ones who hear it are his children, and to them it’s the best voice in the world.

Steph has the best customer service voice, and she uses it with a wickedness that would make a passive-aggressive Southern belle pale.


	17. The library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little Jason Todd thing with no real beginning or ending.

Jason Todd fell asleep in the library. Not deliberately. It just happened sometimes. Between running his empire, patrol, and his classes, Jason wasn’t above catching a few minutes’ rest whenever and wherever he could.

Today, that happened to be the Gotham City Public Library.

The librarians didn’t mind, bless them. Jason was a familiar face around Gotham’s many branches. He had come to the library as a child, drawn by the quiet and the warmth and shelf after shelf of books to explore. As an adult, it wasn’t uncommon to see him curled up at a corner table, surrounded by stacks of books, annotated papers, and his battered laptop, chewing on his hoodie string as he tried to detangle and organize an assignment.

The library was a haven for young and old, rich and poor, the intellectual and those who yearned to be more. Jason was hardly the only one to claim a corner as “theirs,” to splash tired eyes in the bathroom sink, to allow their body to relax in a place they knew they wouldn’t be jumped or harassed. Jason knew these regulars, could nod to them from across the table or down the aisle.

It was technically against the rules to sleep in the library. The tables were intended for studying, not napping. The pleather armchairs were meant for reading, not dozing. But it was fair to say that Jason was more than just a familiar face. He was a favorite.

They didn’t know much about him beyond his first name. They knew he was a student at Gotham U with a grueling night shift. (Public service, he’d said once, with a smile they couldn’t interpret, but little else.) They knew he was quiet, polite, and respectful. They knew he would flirt if he thought it would raise spirits but otherwise kept his distance. If you needed to push a heavy cart or stretch for the top shelf, somehow he always knew when to appear. And it was always good when facing an unruly patron to know that Jason was just around the corner.

He was a good boy, they all said, a sweet, kind boy. So they let him sleep.


	18. Dick + Jason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Dick + Jason as brothers for heartcanon
> 
> "Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183038384562/jason-and-dick-as-brothers-for-heartcanon

It’s pretty well-established that Dick was a crappy big brother in his first go-round with Jason. Not all of it was his fault. His easy relationship with Bruce had delayed teenage rebellion a few years, and when it hit, it hit with a vengeance. Reeling from the dramatic fracturing of his primary stabling relationship, Dick had seen Jason’s introduction as a replacement and as a punishment. He hadn’t handled it well.

When Jason… came back, Dick saw the return as his second chance. He hadn’t been there for Jason, not in life and not in death, but he would be there now. It wasn’t always easy. After all, Tim and Damian were his brothers, too, and Jason had a bad habit of shooting at them. And Jason… Jason was wary of Dick. Angry. Hurt. And in the silence of his empty apartment or on a starlit Gotham rooftop, Dick had to admit that those emotions were well-deserved.

But Dick was persistent, like a golden retriever with a chew toy. He would show up to check on Jason, always from a distance, always doing his best to respect boundaries, but still there. When the team had to venture into Hood’s territory, Dick would be the one to volunteer. When Hood disappeared from time to time, Dick would be the one to go look for him. Some of it was practical—Bruce would only enrage Jason, and neither Dick nor Bruce wanted to put the younger boys in Jason’s crosshairs—but mostly it was selfish. Dick wanted to be there with Jason in any way he could.

Slowly, Dick’s persistence paid off. Jason didn’t stop protesting his random stop-bys, but the odds that Dick was going to get himself shot, stabbed, punched, or otherwise mauled slowly decreased. Dick began to tuck away memories, hoarding them like a magpie stealing trinkets. Fighting side by side with Jay. Sitting on a rooftop with Jay. Eating day-old Chinese takeout on a busted old couch with Jay. The first time Jay answered a text that wasn’t an order or a call for help. Patching up Jay’s arm while the other man’s breath hissed in and out, a damp forehead braced against Dick’s shoulder. The first time Jay got worried and went to find _him_. Getting razzed during patrol. Being called Big Bird again. Movie nights. Late-night talks.  Standing shoulder to shoulder at Bruce’s wedding, Cassie’s recital, Tim’s award ceremony, Damian’s graduation.

Dick may never be Jason’s first call, and he’s okay with that. Different people can fill different voids in a life. Maybe the space Dick filled would have been different, had he gotten in right the first time. Maybe a lot of things would be different. Sometimes that still bothers him, the what-ifs and the if-onlys, but most days, he’s just grateful. Grateful deep in his chest and the pit of his stomach and that sweet, aching lump at the base of his throat that he gets whenever he looks over and sees Jason smiling and alive. He doesn’t need to be the first call. He’s content being a big brother and a friend.


	19. Tim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Spleencanon with Tim bc spleens, ya know?
> 
> Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, fuck you, sir or madam
> 
> Originally posted here: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183039120742/spleencanon-with-tim-bc-spleens-ya-know-thanks

It’s generally accepted that in the divvying up of Bruce Wayne’s legacy, Tim takes over Wayne Enterprises. That makes sense. He’s young, but he’s clever. He spent his childhood listening to his parents talk business, squirreling away each scrap of information in the hopes that if he learned enough, understood enough, he could talk to them in a way that would make them listen. When Bruce takes him in, he does the same thing, applying the full force of his intellect and attention to learning the business of his hero, both in the cowl and out of it.

On top of that, Tim _likes_  exercising his business acumen. He likes staring at a problem and puzzling out a way to solve it, regardless of whether that problem presented itself in a forest of spreadsheets, an undulating wave of market reports, a cloudy financial future, or an innovation just begging to be made. Even if he didn’t, he’d keep at it to make Bruce proud, but this is one of the few times where Tim feels like luck has smiled down upon him. He likes being the Wayne family face of the business, and none of the others—not charming Dick, crafty Jason, lovable Cass, or even ambitious Damian—make any moves to take the position away from him.

He thinks they might, at first. Tim’s so careful not to hold onto anything too tightly, because it seems the more he tightens his grip around a thing, the more likely it is to be ripped from his fingers. (He gets how that sounds. Looking at the violent deaths that follow their family around, the true losses and poverty and hardships the others have weathered, he _gets_  how pathetic his whining sounds. But that doesn’t make it feel any less true.) So his first few years at WE, Tim works hard but doesn’t get too attached. Bruce will decide he shouldn’t be there after all. The board will decide they’re unhappy with his performance. Damian will decide he wants the job and get his way, as always. Heck, maybe a time traveler will alter the course of history and wipe WE from the timeline before Bruce is even born. Stranger things have happened.

But no one ousts him. No one orders him to leave. So Tim stays. Tim grows. He speaks up more, becomes more comfortable with his power, more assured in his ability to make decisions. He does well, making sound and innovative decisions that shore up the company even more and expand its reach into the global market.

More than that, though, Tim is _loved_. The entire company adores him, or as much as any entity made up of of thousands of individuals can agree on any one thing. Bruce Wayne was always appreciated, their affable, airheaded, well-meaning figurehead. Like his father, Tim puts the well-being of his employees over the bottom line, making sure everyone is offered competitive pay, spectacular benefits, flexible schedules, and equal footing to have their voice heard.

But more than Bruce ever was (or could be), Tim is a fixture in the working lives of his team. His is the presence that brightens the halls, not with wide smiles and charming wit, but with a quiet, soothing calm, the softly spoken word of encouragement, the gentle pat on the shoulder, the genuine wishes of good morning, happy birthday, have a good night. If Mr. Drake-Wayne is here, they think even in the direst crises, everything will be alright. 

Work is work and family is family, and no company can be considered functional without that clear distinction. Tim knows that, and he never attempts to blur the line. But you’d be excused for listening to the way WE employees talk about their boss and thinking that the lonely little boy from the empty mansion grew up to become a man with the largest family imaginable.


	20. Jason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Heartcanon + Jason
> 
> "Heartcanon: Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183039718332/heartcanon-jason

While in the vigilante business, none of the family get tattoos. Identifying permanent marks are a really easy, really stupid way to blow your cover. Even in their most rebellious stages, none of the kids buck that rule. (With one exception that maybe I’ll get into someday.)

When Jason hangs up his mask for good, however, he does end up with a few art pieces of his own. Not too many—getting inked can become an addiction of its own, and Jason’s particular about that sort of thing. Permanence also carries a different weight for him, this scarred boy-turned-man that has failed and been failed so often, so he wants to make sure that anything etched into his skin carries a meaning that will last.

Jason’s first tattoo, other than the exception, is over his heart and no bigger than a silver dollar—Catherine’s initials and birthday, inked in a delicate script. His mom was far from perfect, far from the mother he needed her to be, but she would be a part of him forever.

That’s the one that starts the trend, really. He gets one or two others, all small, obscure, and literary in nature, but its his family who takes over his body, making marks on his skin the way they have on his soul. They’re all beautiful—Jason appreciates beauty, and his fussiness over permanence would never allow him to get a crude or sloppy tattoo—and each matched their person, though often only Jason and that person would get the connection.

The only tattoo that doesn’t fit his aesthetic isn’t a tattoo at all. When in short sleeves, Jason often appears to have a forearm tattoo covering him from wrist to elbow. It’s abstract, with bright, vivid colors and bold strokes. It also changes from day to day and week to week, courtesy of Dick’s multiple children, a 48-color marker set from Uncle Damian, and Jason’s spot in the rankings as one of the top three babysitters in the family. If he looks a little silly with little-kid scribbles covering his skin, no one has the guts to say so. (Even with his vigilante days behind him, Jason is one intimidating dude.) And if he seems to wear short sleeves more often in the days after a babysitting stint, well, no one points that out either.


	21. Damian + Jason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Gutcanon for Damian and Jason
> 
> "Gutcanon: it’s not that I actively want this to be the case – it just unaccountably feels like it should be"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183061013182/for-the-ask-meme-gutcanon-for-damian-and-jason

Jason is the only one Damian can talk about his mother with. It’s ironic, since at first Damian was convinced Jason hated him because of his mother, and he hated Jason in return. Damian was the Chosen One, the heir, but Jason was… Talia had plucked him from the literal gutter, healed him, taken care of him without promise of any return. She… she doted on Jason. Trusted him, in her own way. Saw him as her equal. Damian suspected that they still kept in touch, though he had no proof, and that suspicion bit into him like acid as his exile in Gotham remained long and silent.

He wasn’t sure how Jason felt about Talia. Did he love her? Hate her? Respect her? Dismiss her? The subject of Jason’s resurrection, healing by Pit, and subsequent training with the League was… fraught. And Damian didn’t doubt that the complicated and thorny knot of emotions surrounding Talia and the League extended to him as well. Didn’t Jason call him demon brat and gremlin, just like Tim?

At some point, though Damian just needs someone to talk to. He knows his mother was… not what a mother should be. Not the way the others thought a mother should be, anyways. He knew much of what she’d done was, though justified in her eyes, harmful to him, approaching unforgivable. But he loved her. And he missed her. He didn’t want to leave Gotham or return to the League, but he missed her so much. 

He couldn’t talk to Bruce or Dick. Bruce couldn’t seem to even hear Talia’s name without a crease appearing between his eyebrows and a flame of pain flickering deep in his eyes. And Dick, Dick just got mad. Dick _hated_  Talia. It wasn’t that Damian didn’t understand why, but he didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to watch Dick bite his tongue not to call Talia a witch or a villain or far, far worse.

Jason, though. Jason listened. When Damian couldn’t keep it all bottled up anymore and spilled his guts out on a quiet Gotham rooftop to the silent stars and empty alleyways, Jason listened without saying a word. When Damian stuttered over his own feelings, struggling to express the complicated mess of emotion burning hot in his chest, Jason would offer a quiet question, then listen as Damian started off again.

He wasn’t soft about it. For a man who owned more cashmere sweaters than anyone had a right to, Jason still wasn’t a soft person. He wasn’t Dick with his gentle nudges and easy ways. He was still direct, sarcastic, and sometimes harsh, but he still listened and didn’t dismiss Damian’s feelings, and that was all Damian needed.

In later talks, sometimes Jason would share a little about his own mothers—the one who had raised him and failed him, the one who had betrayed him. It was never much, but Damian accepted the confidences for the pearls of trust that they were. Jason was an okay brother, for a Neanderthal.


	22. Damian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Heartcanon for Damian
> 
> "Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183062070597/im-not-exactly-sure-if-this-is-how-you-should-ask

Damian likes a lot of different music, mostly things he’s picked up from and therefore associates with other people. Music from his mother’s people, both modern pop and traditional classics. Peppy pop from Grayson that he derides as bubblegum foolishness but secretly enjoys. Croony classics from Pennyworth. Golden rock from Father, with its big hair and acoustic guitars. Bouncy club beats from Cain Depressing alternative moaners from Drake. Bass- and drums-heavy punk rock from Todd.

Father takes Damian to his first concerto. They wear matching tuxedos and sit in plush box seats overlooking the stage. Damian falls asleep before the final number and drools on Father’s jacket sleeve, but Father doesn’t seem to mind. Damian dreams of a bed full of music and a pillow of song. Father plays the oldies station on the way home and sings along under his breath. Damian is just awake enough to hear and to smile as his father’s warm baritone wraps him in something like a hug.

Todd takes Damian to his first real concert, a raucous show of flashing lasers and spewing flame. Damian wore the t-shirt, hoodie, and jeans Todd had bullied him into, but looking around, he sees a sea of leather, shredded denim, and spikes. They push their way to a spot at the railing and sing along with the band. Damian likes the way the heavy thudding of the drums wrestles his heart into its beat. The bassist looks up and winks at him, making Damian flush to the roots of his hair. On their way home, he tells Todd that next time he wants to dress like everyone else. Todd ruffles his hair, and Damian lets him with minimal growling.

Pennyworth teaches Damian how to swing on the slick tiled kitchen floor. The house is empty, and they slip and slide and twist past each other to the rhythm of the wailing brass instruments. Pennyworth’s collar is undone and he’s panting heavily as they jitterbug, basket whip, and tuck turn, but there’s a glow to his skin, and he seems younger than Damian has ever seen him before. The kitchen is back in order before anyone returns, but Pennyworth winks at Damian over dinner.

Grayson takes him to karaoke. The event is a bust—Damian is too stiff, too shy, too anxious to make a fool of himself in front of strangers. So instead, Grayson takes him home, back to his little apartment in Bludhaven, closes all the curtains, turns off the lights except for one small lamp, and turns on the stereo. They howl along to the music, jumping on Grayson’s lumpy couch, and Damian laughs until his sides ache.

Damian listens to his mother’s music when he’s feeling homesick, when he aches so badly to smell the sweet mix of spices and the zephyr wind and his mother’s jasmine perfume, to taste proper mint tea or crackly fried luqaymat, to hear his own _language_  again. He lies curled on his bed, wrapped in Grayson’s sweatshirt, and tries to rub out the yawning chasm in his chest.

Drake doesn’t look at him as they sit by the hospital bed. The room is quiet except for the steady beeping of the machines. There’s nothing to say. Either things turn out okay or they don’t. All they can do is wait. Drake pulls an earbud from his ear and, without looking, hands it to Damian. Damian hesitates, then places the device. The tenor is mid-song, backed by a mournful piano and a low bass. The words are soft and sad. They should make him feel worse. They don’t. Instead, Damian closes his eyes and lets himself slump until his shoulder is braced against Drake’s.

Cain teaches Damian a different way to dance, dragging him along to girls’ night with Brown and Gordon. He’s not sure why—surely they would have more fun without him. Surely he would have more fun at home. But she insists, and Cain is immovable when she truly wants something. She picks out his clothes and musses his hair just so before loading him onto her bike. They meet the others outside a club. It’s a Teen Night, and Damian is waved through after the others get their hands stamped. The music is painfully loud, the lights throbbing, the floor overly crowded. Damian stands in the middle of their little group and tries to shuffle back and forth. Cain laughs and grabs his shoulders, teach him how to move his feet and twist his hips. When she dances, she throws her whole body into the movement. Damian thinks there may be no prettier girl in the whole world than his sister.

Ariana Grande, though, is 100% Damian’s music to claim.


	23. Alfred + Damian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Spleencanon for Alfred and Damian
> 
> "Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, f*ck you, sir or madam"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183085245697/spleencanon-for-alfred-and-damian-please-hope

Look. Alfred Pennyworth is a wonderful man who has had to put up with far too much crap in his life yet manages to be a fantastic father and grandfather. That said, I am convinced that Damian was the one child that he actively disliked in the beginning.

Dick made Alfred nervous, because he (reasonably) doubted whether Bruce was ready for responsibility. Jason made him wary, because he was a whole bushel of issues neither Alfred nor Bruce was fully ready to deal with. Tim just made him feel hecking grateful, while Cass was an enigma that made him feel curious and bemused in equal measure. But _Damian_.

A small part is definitely Damian’s fault. New-to-Gotham Damian is a brat. He’s arrogant and insecure and covers his insecurity with more arrogance. He’s an emotional wrecking ball whose bullheaded determination to conquer _everything_  hurts everyone around him, including the people Alfred values most. Also, he’s the first person in the family in pretty much ever to treat Alfred like an actual servant. Rude.

Worse, Damian is so much like Bruce, but at first, Alfred can only see the parts of Bruce that he hates. And there _are_ parts. The arrogance, the coldness, the emotional detachment, the stubbornness, that isn’t wholly matrilineal, friends, and Bruce as a kid was a _wreck_  of a human being. (Alfred still isn’t sure how they both made it out of Bruce’s teen years without more blood being spilled. Yes, more.)

But if Alfred is being completely honest, in the beginning it wouldn’t have mattered if Damian had been in the running for sainthood. Alfred would have hated him because he hated the boy’s family. Not because of race or religion or anything so banal and impersonal. (Alfred might be an old white guy, but he is _Alfred,_  don’t you dare, he would never.)

No, Alfred hates the al Ghuls because, even before the mess with Jason and the Pit or Cass and Lady Shiva or Tim and the heir debacle, Talia and Ra’s hurt Bruce. They took Alfred’s boy and molded him into something as close to a killer as Bruce could ever get, then Talia broke his heart (and possibly freaking _raped_  him, depending on which version of canon you look at), and Ra’s has tried to kill the lad. Multiple times. You don’t do that and get to stay off of Alfred Pennyworth’s hit list. (Yes, he has a hit list. He doesn’t plan on doing anything with it, because Bruce, but the man is ex-MI6. Of course he has a hit list.)

So yeah, Alfred hates Damian because the boy is an ill-mannered pompous brat spawned from a she-devil and maniacal scum. And then Bruce dies. And the world falls apart. And Alfred has to live with a little boy who looks so much like the one he lost.

(They’re okay now. Alfred is Alfred and that means he’s a superlative grandfather to all of his grandchildren, even Damian. The kid loosened up a little, Alfred reexamined some of his biases and remembered to look past the prickles, and together they built a solid foundation of mutual respect atop of which they’ve slathered a whole lot of love. Their relationship is unique, just as all of Alfred’s relationships with his family are one of a kind, but it works for them. Also, hurt that boy and Alfred will Sweeney Todd you into meat pies.)


	24. Jason + Catherine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Spleencanon for Jason and Catherine
> 
> "Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, f*ck you, sir or madam"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183153674377/spleen-canon-for-jason-and-catherine-if-youre

Here’s the thing. Much like Talia, how you choose to spite the author here depends on how you interpret Catherine. Was she a good mom or a horrible one? From what I can tell, this interpretation varies in canon and in fanon and is muddied by Jason’s own internal narrative.

Jason Todd loves his mother. He _loves_  her with all the pure, passionate devotion a little kid can give. To him, Mom means hugs with soft, bony arms, making blanket forts in thunderstorms, trips to the library, and someone in his corner when Willis came blustering.

I think that love only thickens as Jason ages. Not deepens, not becomes truer. It’s like scar tissue or a protective coating that Jason applies again and again.

Because his mom was sick. Catherine did her best for him, but her best wasn’t good enough. He never should have been hungry. He never should have been homeless. He never should have been the adult, the caretaker when he wasn’t even old enough to see PG-13 movies. He never should have been left alone and desperate on Gotham’s cruel streets. As much as the hugs and trips and quiet little moments meant to Jason growing up, they were vastly outnumbered by other moments—Catherine, high as a kite on drugs, or helpless under the heavy hand of illness, leaving Jason alone and afraid.

Catherine loved her son, but she also failed him. And that’s not something Jason can face, not after Ethiopia and everything that came after. So he lets the wound fester, acknowledging it only enough to let the callous add another layer before covering it up and tucking it out of sight.

_She did her best._

_She made some bad choices, that’s all._

_It’s not her fault._

_Willis was the bad guy._

_It was just bad luck._

_She meant well._

_She loved me._

Catherine is dead and buried, and unlike Jason, she’ll stay that way. Which means she’s the only parental figure he dare trust, because being dead means not being able to let him down. As long as he doesn’t accept the multitude of ways she failed him, Jason can keep her memory safe and untarnished, like a memorial behind glass.


	25. Steph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Steph heartcanon
> 
> "Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183175924437/steph-heartcanon

Steph gets a lot of pity for her weird place in the lives of the collective Waynes. Sometimes that pity is her own, a festering, prickly, burning ball in the hollow of her chest where her ribs come together.

After all, Steph’s not a Wayne, not a true and legal member of the family. Not that she wanted to be in the beginning—her focus had been solely on stopping her disaster of a father. But it was hard to be around the Waynes, to see the love and the care and the emotional bonds so thick they’re almost tangible and _not_  want to be a part of something like that.

Tim might have harbored insecurities that he forced his way into Bruce Wayne’s life, but Steph _knows_  she did. That’s who she is, a wrecking ball of personality and intent. Most days she’s proud of that, or at least at peace with it. Some days she wants to crawl under her bedcovers and never come out again. And the others—Bruce, but also Tim and Damian, and sometimes even Dick—had never been shy about letting her know just how unwelcome she could be.

Steph’s loud. Brash. Opinionated. Stubborn. A buttinsky, her mom would say. Before Cass, Steph was the only girl in the Cave, and after Cass… well, it was hard not to feel even louder, even clumsier, even more  _too much_  when compared to the dainty and silent assassin. Unlike the others, Steph was raised poor and is still poor. She wants Bruce Wayne’s attention and respect, not his money, but on her low days, the piling bills and threadbare coat she wears get lumped in with everything else she pities herself for.

She’s not a Wayne kid. She can never be, not in any platonic way, thanks to her history with Tim. Instead, Steph stands in the doorway, one foot in the Manor and the other still stretched back to her mom’s tiny apartment with the leaky radiator and flickering bathroom lights. Close enough to feel the heat and see the ties between Bruce, his kids, and even Alfred stitch tighter by the day. Far enough away that she can still feel the chill.

That’s how Steph feels about the Waynes on her bad days, of which there were many when she was younger. A person doesn’t fake her own death without some bad days as motivation. Steph’s older now, though, more settled in who she is and who she wants to be, and with that comes a clearer perspective and far more good days than bad.

On her good days, Steph knows she’s the luckiest girl alive. Her dad will never hurt anyone again, and in his place, she has this weird, prickly, super-rich sort-of-uncle and his butler-dad. Maybe Steph will never be completely and totally comfortable with Bruce the way Cass is, but that’s okay. They might get into nose-to-nose arguments on a monthly basis, but she also knows he’d jump in front of a bullet for her or bail her out of jail if she needed him to. (And that’s as _Bruce_. He’s freaking _Batman_ , how cool is that?) And despite being an only child, Steph now has a whole squad of weird, annoying, wonderful sort-of siblings, including Bludhaven’s Hottest Bachelor, the next Steve Jobs (without the jerkiness), a literal angel, Nightmare Fodder the Elder and Nightmare Fodder the Anklebiter (great for scaring off overly pushy guys), and a clever and beautiful big sister out of Steph’s childhood dreams.

Best of all, Steph has her own life. She has a mom. Her living, breathing, not-an-assassin, not-a-drug-addict, tired-all-the-time-but-still-a-champion mom who still kisses Steph’s forehead before bed and makes blanket nests for weekend rom-com marathons. She has a home, which might be tiny and falling apart, but every inch of it is covered in life, from her height marks on her doorframe to their family Christmas card on the fridge to the dent in the drywall where six-year-old Steph got overzealous with her somersaults. It’s a safe haven she can retreat to and let the noise and the drama of the Waynes fade away.

On her good days, Steph knows she occupies a weird place in the lives of the Waynes, one foot in and one foot out. But it’s her place and no one else’s. She wouldn’t trade it for anything.


	26. Damian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Heartcanon + Damian
> 
> "Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183226890377/heart-cannon-damian

It’s a strange thing for Damian, learning to… what even was he doing? Learning to value others? To respect them? He would argue that he did both even when with the League, since a tool could be assigned a value and an enemy could be respected for their strength or cunning. Then again, he had to admit (internally, secretly, privately) that his pride often kept him from doing either, even when it would have been wise.

Father, of course, was always at the pinnacle of Damian’s estimation. Father had earned both Mother’s and Grandfather’s fear and respect, an almost unfathomable honor. Father was cunning. Father was brave. Father was strong. Even when his rules and tight-lipped ways baffled Damian, he was always above true censure. And once Damian learned to look for his heart—and to value what he found there—that estimation only grew.

Grayson was next to join Father on the pedestal, but for very different reasons. It wasn’t that Damian thought his older brother was perfect. Grayson was far too soft, too trusting, too willing to be ridiculous. But while Father earned Damian’s esteem for his warrior ways as Batman, Grayson earned similar regard by being Damian’s older brother. Grayson _listened_ , not out of fear or duty, but because he cared for what Damian had to say.

Pennyworth was there as well. It had taken Damian time to learn to see the butler as family instead of a servant, but once he did, it was hard to miss the devotion and care. Pennyworth was even less affectionate than Father, but he showed his heart in a myriad of ways, from special meals cooked to sarcastic barbs to afternoons spent together over a tea tray and a pack of cards.

For the longest time, these three stood alone. Even as Damian learned to see others in a new light, these three were… different, the three keys that fit the strange little slot in his heart.

Eventually, though, the rest of the team muscled their way in as well. Cain and Todd came sooner, first carving out niches with the almost instinctive wariness they sparked in Damian, then working their way up with their unique forms of cunning and heart. Maybe that was strange, valuing them first for their frightening and dangerous ways, but as Damian slowly, painfully learned a new way of living, he grew to appreciate watching those further along in the same path. Cain and Todd were both dangerous, alarmingly so, but they both (eventually) chose to use their might to help the vulnerable. If they could do it, maybe Damian could, too. It also didn’t hurt that from time to time, they both used that power on Damian’s behalf. Even after all this time in Gotham, he still wasn’t used to being protected rather than punished.

Brown and Drake—yes, Drake—managed to find a spot as well. Damian had at first thought them both stupid, worthless, a stain on the family name. Although, that wasn’t wholly true, was it? From the start he had seen dangerous potential in them both, cleverness and wit and determination strong enough to overshadow him, the unwanted heir. It was Damian’s pride that had largely kept them in contempt, pride and fear and an unwillingness to acknowledge that there was more to the world than what the League had taught him. But they wore him down, like a metal file against iron bars. (Damian would never admit this. He didn’t have to.)

Damian hadn’t realized how very crowded his pedestal had gotten, how changed his views had become, until he found himself sitting in an alley with Catwoman one night.

He had hated Selina Kyle from the very first, _loathed_  her seductive, slippery ways with all the cold disdain of an al Ghul and the hot-tempered venom of a child still holding out hope for a happy ending. If Father _must_  be with someone, why not Mother? Why not the woman who had given him an heir? And if Father rejected Mother for someone else, was that also a rejection of Damian? Of the family they could be?

Kyle knew this. Damian had certainly made no attempts to hide his feelings. (She had neatly avoided every booby trap he had set for her, both at the Manor and around Gotham. Damned tricky woman.) Yet after a walloper of a fight with Father that had sent Damian running, Kyle had been the one to find him atop the old water tower. She acted like it was pure chance that had entwined their paths. Maybe it had been. He didn’t know her life, and there were one or two seedy but highly profitable pawnshops in the area. Damian had ignored her. She had ignored him in turn, preferring to sit several arm’s lengths away, face turned toward the river, her attention on her nails. Very like a cat, to pointedly not give a person her attention.

She hadn’t said a word. He probably wouldn’t have reacted well if she had. Instead, they had sat together in total silence until his hot, huffing breaths had slowed into shudders and then eased entirely, and the cool night air had lifted some of the tightness from his chest. Then Kyle had stood and handed him a tin from her belt.

“I’m late for an engagement,” she said. “There’s a colony of ferals in the rezoned lot on Jericho Street. Lure them, catch them, and get them to the no-kill by morning, before the crew shows up. The big guy says you’re good with animals, and you seem to be handy with traps.”

She hadn’t waited for Damian to agree, merely dropped the tin into his hand before shimmying down from the tower and into the night.

He did respect her, Damian had to admit grudgingly as he scaled the fence into the lot Kyle had mentioned. She was cunning, for a thief. And he valued the happiness she seemed to bring Father. Still, those words felt… inadequate. For Kyle. For Damian’s family. For people like Jon and Colin.

It wasn’t that he had learned to better respect and value people, Damian realized slowly, the words and emotions settling into place like drifting sediment. It was that… that he had learned to like them. To trust them. Not all, certainly, or even most. But some.

Damian’s lips tilted upward as knelt to open the tin of tuna. Perhaps he would remove one of the booby traps he had planned for Kyle’s next visit. Only one of them, though. He wouldn’t want her to feel unwelcome.


	27. Dick + Tim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Dick + Tim for heartcanon
> 
> "Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183311501562/if-youre-still-doing-these-can-i-ask-for

I don’t think enough attention is given to Dick and Tim’s relationship in the beginning, back before Damian, before Cass, before Jason. Before Bruce’s death. Before their falling out. Before Tim grew older and more isolated, and before Dick found himself pulled in too many directions to keep his brother from falling through the cracks.

I think that, in the beginning, they were both wary of each other, if for different reasons. Once again, Bruce had gone out and gotten himself a new kid without any warning. Dick knew his dad was still reeling from Jason, but they were too volatile together for him to be of any real help. Can you imagine how he must have felt to pick up the paper and see a grainy shot of a child standing in Batman’s shadow, the R proudly blazing on his chest? How worried he must have been? What did this new wrinkle in Bruce’s behavior mean? What did it mean for his relationship with Dick, his mental health, the safety of Gotham?

Tim, on the other hand, was probably low-key terrified of Dick. He couldn’t have known the awkward awfulness that had been Jason and Dick’s fraught relationship, but Tim also knew it was Dick’s original boots he was filling now. There was a chance Dick would resent him, would push to have Tim kicked out of his new role. For Tim, a kid who was used to being on the outside looking in—sometimes literally—the thought of being let into the Waynes’ secret world only to be banished into outer darkness once more would have seemed like a nightmare of the worst order.

They probably circled each other for a time. Dick wouldn’t have been around much, what with Bludhaven and Nightwing keeping him busy, and Tim’s focus would have been on rehabilitating an emotionally broken Bruce. But soon enough Tim would have figured out that he needed Bruce’s first and most trusted partner to help him piece the man back together, and Dick, still suffocating in the guilt of Jason’s death, would have been motivated to make sure he didn’t make the same mistakes twice.

So Dick starts coming by more often. Never for long, since a hurting Bruce is a spiteful Bruce, and even knowing the reasons wouldn’t have completely dulled Dick’s own temper. But he does try to make his visits a weekly thing, often under the thinnest of pretenses—return a DVD, snag a recipe from Alfred, pick up a book from his old room, run through the Cave’s case files. And when he’s at the Manor, Dick makes a point to seek out Tim, to make small-talk, to glean another fragment of information or two about the new kid in his dad’s life.

It’s surprisingly hard at first, because Tim struggles with being seen as a silly kid, as an interloper, as a burden, so he’s very polite and very nervous and seems unhealthily attuned to every twinge of awkwardness Dick feels. But then it’s not hard at all, because Dick is kind and doesn’t seem to mind when Tim’s insecurities run away with his mouth.

Still, the aquarium is where their bond truly begins to form, that link that for years will seem so unbreakable until it does. Dick could have kept the status quo with the little visits and quick check-ins, but he wanted more. It was hitting him, finally, in the way it should have with Jason, that he had a _brother_. A real little brother, and maybe he’d missed the age of t-ball games and piggyback rides, of treehouses and sleepovers, but that didn’t mean he had to miss all the rest of it, too.

So Dick took Tim to the aquarium (after realizing that a sporting event wouldn’t be Tim’s cup of tea. Besides, an afternoon in the stands felt like more of a Bruce thing anyways.) They drifted from tank to tank, stopping so Tim could laugh at the adelies or stare up slack-jawed as the shadow of a massive manta passed by. They ate corndogs and pretzels for lunch, then capped the meal by eating cups of Dippin’ Dots while they waited to pet the dolphins. They talked about nothing important but anything they wanted. Dick kept sneaking shots of Tim’s wide blue eyes as he stared up at the nearest tank, and sometimes Tim would catch him and flush until the tips of his ears glowed.

At the end of the day, Dick bought a shirt that said “Just Keep Swimming.” Tim bought a grey sweatshirt with the aquarium’s logo. He fell asleep in the car, sunburned and drained, wrapped in the depths of that sweatshirt. The photo they took together in front of the beluga tank, the pleasant-looking white whale grinning above them, went with Dick to work and sat framed on his desk. Whenever someone mentioned it, Dick would pick up the frame, lean back in his chair with a wide grin, and rest his fingertip against Tim’s chest, just below his bright, smiling face.

“This is my little brother,” he would say. “His name is Tim.”


	28. Tim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Tim + Gutcanon
> 
> "Gutcanon: it’s not that I actively want this to be the case – it just unaccountably feels like it should be"
> 
> Originally posted at: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com/post/183335315877/gutcannon-for-tim

In the fandom, there’s a lot of joking debate about which child is Bruce’s favorite. I think there’s a parallel thread running through the BatFam, and in the vein of many common family jokes, it’s mostly funny, but there’s also a shimmer of truth.

Some argue that Dick’s the favorite. He was the first, the first child, the first partner, and, of the family, the first friend. He's lived with Bruce the longest, can decipher when when nearly no one else can, and Bruce trusts him the most.

Some say it’s Jason. “He gets away with literal murder!” is the joke. Jason, who brought life back to the Manor. Jason, the prodigal who always has a home. Jason, the broad mountain of a man with a big intellect and bigger heart. Jason, who looks more like Bruce with every year.

Cass’s name comes up a lot, too. Cassie, who Bruce calls Princess without a drop of irony. Cassie, who can read Bruce at a glance and can communicate with him without the words that so often trip them both up. Cassie, who’s beauty and poise and a lioness’s deadliness in a gazelle’s frame. Cassie, who is the only one to regularly hug Bruce, even when he’s at his grumpiest. Cassie, who made Bruce smile again.

Even Damian gets his fair share of mentions (admittedly, some are from himself.) He is, after all, the only biological child. And that doesn’t really mean anything in their family, except when it does, like when Alfred brings out old photos of a tiny, scowling Bruce, and it looks like Damian from behind the faded film. And he’s the baby. The one Bruce can still carry to bed. The one still young enough to come to him for nightmares. The one who still thinks his dad is _cool_.

No one mentions Tim.

It’s not a malicious omission. No one’s saying Bruce doesn’t love his third son. He does. _Of course_  he does. Bruce loves all his kids, of which Tim is one. But no one would accuse Tim of being the favorite, not even in jest. Not even Tim himself.

Most days, it doesn’t bother him. For a boy who spent most of his life in solitude, being just one of the masses is kind of comforting. Most days.

The old days with Bruce were never easy. Bruce was a mess. Tim was too fragile. They bolstered each other where it counted, but their flaws and failures lined up too neatly, like waves overlapping to create a rogue surf strong enough to drag them both under. But in between the tides, Bruce was _Tim’s_.

Dick, who had experienced Bruce as a young, earnest, first-time father, sometimes worried over the distance he perceived between his father and Bruce's new ward. Bruce’s first priority was Gotham, and he always held a little part of himself back from everyone. But to Tim, who had experienced nothing but neglect and apathy, even a fraction of Bruce’s attention felt like a flood, and in the rare occasions when Bruce’s focus turned wholly, singly upon him, Tim felt like he was stepping into sunlight for the first time.

But that was several years ago. Several adoptions ago. Several deaths ago. Bruce is busier than ever, attention divided into dozens of directions. And Tim never learned how to ask for it. Quitting school meant there were no more events for Bruce to attend. Patrol was often spent corralling Damian or monitoring Jason. The better Tim did at Wayne E, the less Bruce had to be there. And Tim was nearly an adult now. Didn’t that mean that he should be okay by himself? Wasn’t that what being an adult was? Being independent and alone? He wasn’t a baby. He wasn’t some stupid, needy, little kid. So some of the others needed Bruce’s attention more. That was fine. And maybe Bruce seemed to enjoy spending time with some of them more than Tim. That was fine, too.

He was fine. It was all... fine.


	29. Tim Drake + Jack Drake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Anonymous: "This is horrible but Tim playing "hit the road jack" after his dad leaves for a business trip pre-adoption by Bruce."
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I

I think you have a window where this is plausible. Tim is a natural introvert and people-pleaser who learned a long time ago that outright aggression got him zilch with his parents, which means this boy has the finest honed sense of passive-aggressiveness this side of Alfred. He is also 1) a teenager, and 2) often battling some form of anxiety and/or depression, which means his sense of humor can get a little skewed.

When Tim first meets Bruce, he’s too busy trying to keep Bruce alive and trying not to hyperventilate over being in the presence of the man he’s s̶t̶a̶l̶k̶e̶d̶ followed for so long that he really doesn’t have much attention to give to his parents. It’s a nice change of pace for him. Then, much later, Tim’s mom is dead and Jack _finally_  has a change of heart and they’re doing this weird, tentative, awkward dance to mend the rift between them (before Jack up and _dies_  because even when he’s trying to do good this man is useless), so Tim wouldn’t play anything like that then. Grief and mourning the potential of what now can never be and all that.

But in that narrow slice of space? When Tim has a handle on the whole Robin sidekick thing enough that it starts to feel comfortable and manageable and he can pay attention to his (lack of) home life again? When he’s comfortable with _Bruce_  enough that Bruce starts treating him as something other than a nuisance and Tim gets his first taste of what it must be like to have a dad?

Yeah, I think he would.

You have to remember, too, that Tim still thinks it’s his job to take care of Bruce. Even as Bruce slides deeper and deeper into the partner-turned-mentor-turned-parent role, it doesn’t really click for Tim that _Bruce_  is supposed to be the adult in the relationship. Alfred, maybe, but Bruce? No way.

So does it hurt when Jack promises to come to Tim’s academic decathlon and instead books a flight out of town the day before? Does it hurt that the man can’t seem to stay in Gotham for more than a weekend at a time, like Tim’s presence is too Gotham-toxic to handle? Does it hurt that _it still hurts_  after a lifetime after disappointment after disappointment?

Yes. But there’s no one around to kiss that busted knee, so Tim plasters it over with faux-rebellious, sarcastic music choices and calls it a day. _I don’t need you and that’s fine_  is what the music says with a hearty, completely false laugh. _I don’t need anyone_. Hit the road, Jack, and don’t come back.


	30. Weird/Controversial Preferences - BatFam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellievate on Tumblr asked: "Ok I've got a headcanon question- what sort of weird/controversial things do they un-ironically enjoy such as foods, movies, music, etc?"

Hmmmm. What’s deemed “weird” or “controversial” is so dependent on social context, so it’s really hard to say.

Bruce’s issues range from “thinks he can survive on one hour of sleep per week” to “unironically enjoys Vine music.” His worst trait, at least according to some members of his family, is taste in YouTube compilations. That man will watch fifty babies suck a lemon for the first time and laugh until he cries.

Tim, who practically raised himself and therefore is a walking bundle of quirks, has a favorite late-night snack, which is a toasted mayonnaise, peanut butter, and banana sandwich with a Taco Bell Baja Blast. He makes Alfred stock it by the gallon.

Dick enjoys the Cars sequels. He refuses to apologize.

Cass has a fondness for creepy-crawlies. When they go to the zoo, she likes to visit the insect and reptile houses and announce which ones are “friend-shaped.” (They are all friend-shaped.)

Jason doesn’t like Cary Grant. He’s never fully been able to explain why. Just mutters something about “that smug ******” and leaves the room.

Damian eats popcorn unbuttered and unsalted. Just, like, raw popcorn.

Alfred has an unexplained loathing for the color orange. All shades. Again, he’s never explained why, and it’s a hard thing to even notice, because he’s not vocal about it. He just really, really hates it.

Stephanie cannot smell Goldfish crackers without getting queasy. She had a run in her younger years when it was all she would eat, but then she overloaded. That combined with a really nasty stomach bug that resulted in some unfortunate orange-yellow projectile vomit means she just can’t do those crackers anymore.

Duke is an angel and has no faults. (Duke likes pizza with pineapple _and_ anchovies and is a monster.)


	31. Bruce Wayne, His Parents, and His Kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous on Tumblr asked: "How about Bruce sharing small facts here and there about his parents to his kids?"

Sad as it is, I don’t know how much he has to share. He was eight, when they left him. Nearly a decade of memories, but by the time he’s seventeen, he has lived more life without them than with them. And of the time that he had, he was so young for most of it, turning memories into impressions, sensations, indescribable feelings instead of concrete events. Still, I’m sure he’s managed to turn some of that into expressible information, combined with stories from Alfred and his own research.

Dick would have heard the most about their deaths. It would be fresh again in Bruce’s mind, taking care of this lost and needy child still reeling from the death of his own parents. Dick would be one of the few kids who heard about that night straight from the source, rather than growing up surrounded by the Gotham folklore or getting it through the whisper network of other kids or as apologetic explanation from Alfred. He would have heard about the theater, the alley, the gun, the pearls, the waiting—all framed for a young audience but no less brutal for the light details. He would know, more than anyone except maybe Alfred or Clark, how Bruce had _felt_  that night, Bruce’s meager offering to Dick’s own hurt.

_I remember feeling so grownup, sitting between them. I watched my mother’s face more than I watched the stage, interpreting the events by her emotions than my own rudimentary Italian_ , he tells Dick. _I felt, sitting between the two of them, like who could touch us? There was nowhere safer._

Damian would have heard the most about the Wayne family lineage. He would insist on it, taking Bruce through the halls to learn the names of every pale face that stared down at him—who they were, what they did, how they died. He would want to know accomplishments and accolades and histories, and Bruce would give him what little he knew about his parents’ own past, the good, the bad, and the mediocre.

_They hated each other when they first met_ , he tells Damian, _both too proud and too aware of each other’s faults, too willing to snipe instead of listen. It took time for them to see the good. When I did something foolhardy, my father would tap his finger against my forehead and tell me that a sharp intellect can be used to excise or to wound. A cut made should be made only to heal._

Tim would hear the least directly, because he wouldn’t ask and Bruce has a hard time sharing anything without prompting. He would more get the sense of falling into an echo, of joining Bruce in the mirror image of a memory. An affectionate tousle of hair, a silly rhyme muttered under breath, a proud clap on the shoulder, a spontaneous duet on a neglected piano.

_My mother would sit here for hours and play_ , he tells Tim. _It was the soundtrack of my childhood. Looking back, I think it helped her say the things she didn’t know how to say, or didn’t want to say. She taught me some, before... I tried to learn more, after. For her. But it wasn’t the same. She would like it, knowing you’re here._

Jason would learn about his grandparents through their tastes. Every book in the library would have a story attached, either from Bruce or from Alfred or from scribbled annotations in the book itself. Stories were a language of love to the Waynes, a way to comfort, a way to teach, a way to connect. It is a legacy Bruce cannot shake.

_This was my father’s_ , he tells Jason. _My grandfather picked up this edition in London while on business and brought it home. It was my father’s first Christie, the start of the entire collection. He would read it to me in bed, a chapter every night. I was too young to understand some of it, but I liked the twistiness of it, of not being able to guess the mystery that turned out obvious in the end. He would be happy to know you have it now._

Stephanie would hear about the joy, the way the Manor used to be a place of laughter and boldness. There would be a line between Bruce’s eyebrows, a small furrow that spoke of grasping for something he couldn’t quite reach, of bittersweet pain and consternation, and of being aware he was failing and falling into gaps he didn’t know how to breach.

_My mother had a laugh like yours_ , he tells Stephanie. _Loud and cackling. She called it her wicked witch laugh. Sometimes she would chase me around the Manor, cackling with her fingers bent like claws, until she caught me. She appreciated people who were genuine, so that’s what she tried to be. No matter how loud she had to be._

Duke would hear about ambition and hopes and dreams. Thomas and Martha both left diaries, private looks into themselves that Bruce could never bring himself to read, but that each of the kids had at least skimmed from time to time. Duke read them all from cover to cover, trying to understand this strange family he had placed himself into, this strange world. So what Bruce tells him isn’t a surprise, but it’s still nice to hear.

_My father was a doctor_ , he tells Duke. _I think he wanted me to follow him into medicine. When I was little, he would teach me to say long medical terms, turning it into a game, a tongue twister to master. I don’t know how proud he would be of me, using my fists and toys instead of a scalpel and my brain. But he would have been so proud of you. All he wanted to do in life was to help other people._

Cass would hear about the parties, the galas and soirees and benefits that would fling open every door in the Manor and flood the place with light and music. Bruce would show her faded photos, dug up from family albums and society articles, and crackling reels taken by professional documenters and a little boy with his first camcorder.

_They both loved to dance_ , he tells Cass. _They were musicians to the soles of their feet. My father was tone deaf, but he loved big band and swing, being able to spin my mother around until her hair tumbled free, and making her laugh until she couldn’t stand. My mother loved... she loved everything. She was grace and poise and everything beautiful, just like you. They both danced like there was no one else in the room._

Bruce takes them to the cemetery once a year. He goes more often, pilgrimages made no matter the season, on Christmas, on Mother’s Day, on Father’s Day, on birthdays and just because. But they join him just once, in the spring when the leaves unfold and the birds sing and the crabapple trees around the property begin weeping drifts of soft, white blossoms onto the graves. They stand before the headstones, quiet and contemplative, and listen as Bruce tells his parents what they’ve missed since they’ve been away.

_They would have loved you_ , he tells them all.  _They would have loved you so much._


	32. Hugs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous on Tumblr asked: "i'm writing a fic rn where the batkids keep like. walking into bruce's space and forcing him to comfort them (ya know the whole "they walk bodily into him" line) which he's doing an okay job of not messing up. but i'm wondering your take on how he'd like really react to each of the kids just planting a hug on him, or what those hugs would be like, or what would cause them (idk take your pick lol)"

Oh anon, imagining BatFam hugs _is my absolute favorite thing_. I think it would depend on where he is in his relationship with each. Like, is this a vignette of when they first come to him? Their first hugs? Or is this later? A Jason-as-Robin hug is very different from a Jason-as-Red-Hood hug. I’ll try to answer fairly generally, but note that timing and circumstances might change these answers.

Dick hugs with his whole body, and he doesn’t ask. (That is, he asks _other_  people. Lessons on consent were and are a big deal. But not Bruce.) When he was a kid, he was forever launching himself at Bruce. Pouncing from above, hanging from Bruce’s neck, his waist, his leg. Squeals of “Catch me, B!” that come out of nowhere, so much that Bruce still breaks out into a cold sweat sometimes when he passes a particular staircase. Dick Grayson doesn’t do anything halfway—not anger, not love, not bravery, not hugs. He doesn’t need a reason, either. Getting comfort, giving comfort, happy to see you, sorry to see you go, any occasion all do. It was a little much for Bruce, in the beginning—everything about Dick was too much in the beginning—but he couldn’t imagine life without it.

Jason’s hugs are fierce, but all the sweeter for their fierceness. He was careful to keep out of arm’s reach his first few months in the Manor, to circle in Bruce’s orbit but not his influence, and would shy away if Bruce reached for him without thinking. If given a hug, Jason tends to go stiff and awkward, too out of touch with his own knobby limbs to know what to do with himself. When he does start reaching for Bruce on his own, it’s with a dismissive roughness, as if shouting _don’t read too much into this_. All playful pushes and teasing slaps. But when he latches onto Bruce—in fright, in sorrow, in relief after a bad scare—his grip is tight and fierce fierce fierce, like he’s trying to pull Bruce directly into his heart.  _Mine, you are mine, you are mine_.

It is a long, long time before Bruce finds out what Tim’s hugs are like. Too long. They wasted so much time. Bruce was prickly and dying, Tim was struggling under the load of not letting him die and desperate not to be pushed away. If asked, Bruce would have said Tim wasn’t a touchy person. That is incorrect, a lie Tim tells to himself as well as to others. Touch him and he _melts_. Physical contact to Tim Drake is like a heating vent to a cat in the middle of winter. He huddles against broad chests and basks in affection. It’s like he’s eating for the first time in his life, too scared to go too fast, too scared it will all go away.

Cass is a lot like Dick, very physical, very open. Even though she comes to Bruce after he’s changed, after he’s different, she gravitates to him like a moth to a light. Hers is the language of movement, after all. She doesn’t cling like Dick, though. She prefers light touches—gentle pokes to the side, kisses to the cheek, resting her head against the warm, flat spread between Bruce’s shoulder blades, being tucked up under his arm. She’s a scary person, so scary even her siblings are scared of her and what she can do, but Bruce never is.

Stephanie is… Well. Her relationship with Bruce has always been rocky. She’s too much like him, and they spark like flint. But they hug. A lot. It started because she was trying to annoy him, and because she needed it, and because she wanted to hide her need beneath the disguise of annoying him. But then she found out that Bruce Wayne smells _amazing_. Now every hug hello, every surprise embrace, is to annoy him, to comfort herself, and to find out what the aftershave of the day is. (And there is literally no way for anyone to make her feel embarrassed about this, because she’s Steph and because she does it to every single person in the Wayne household. They all smell _ridiculously good_  and it’s unfair.)

I’ve already talked about Damian’s relationship with hugging on Chapter Five of this collection.

And I don’t know Duke well enough yet to comment.


End file.
